DomainTools Blog

The Roundtable is coming up in just a few weeks and we are busy reviewing domains for the auction. We have already selected over 150 premium domains and we are VERY excited about the list of several thousand domains that have been submitted to us to pick through. The reserves are set to attract Domain buyers both big and small. We are very selective of what gets in the auction this year.

We have something on the list for just about every buyer. Here is a sneak preview of some of the domains going to auction. There will be a total of 250 domains in the auction and every single one is hand selected.

FamilyPlanning.com	CollegePlacement.com	Medically.com
60.com	DrugAbuseTreatment.com	Tuscan.com
Invites.com	WirelessMouse.com	AppetiteControl.com
AmsterdamVacations.com	HousingProject.com	YW.com
AmericanLiberty.com	Motorbiking.com	HollywoodPremiere.com
Holiday.com	HospitalClothing.com	BusinessManagements.com
Iraq.com	VarsityAthletics.com	SanFranciscoBasketball.com
MintConditionStamps.com	FG.com	WartRemoval.com
CalciumSupplements.com	SendCards.com	XmasToys.com

This is just a sneak preview of what we have coming. The final list is going to be fantastic. We are more excited about this auction than any other auction we have held, and that includes last year’s Domain Roundtable event where almost $4 million dollars in domain names sold in just a few hours.

If you would like to submit a domain, you will need to do it soon. The list is filling up fast. You will not see an auction this big for another year – there will be hundreds of people viewing online and hundreds of people at the conference this year. If you have a domain that you think beats one of the domains above, your time is running out to submit it.

Do you feel like paying more money for a Domain Names? Good news! You are in luck, Verisign is forcing another global price increase in both DotCom and DotNet (do you hear the sarcasm in my voice, god I hate monopoly). The wholesale price is going up yet again for another straight year in a row. Verisign is allowed to continue raising prices every year 7% thanks to the agreement they signed with ICANN two years ago. The good news is Premium domains will soon cost more because crappy domains will cost $50 a year soon enough.

Here is the official Verisign communication justifying the price increase:

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the leading provider of Internet infrastructure for the networked world, today announced, effective as of October 1, 2008, an increase in registry domain name fees for .com and .net, per its agreements with ICANN.

VeriSign announced that the registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.42 to $6.86 and that the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $3.85 to $4.23.

Traffic volume continues to increase with the emergence of consumer-driven services, the surge in Web-connected wireless devices and the proliferation of technologies and services using the Domain Name System (DNS). VeriSign processes a peak of more than 33 billion DNS queries per day under normal traffic conditions.

The .com and .net infrastructures are continually being fortified and scaled to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks and to help protect against service disruptions. VeriSign is increasing the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure by ten times by the year 2010. Additionally, VeriSign will increase its daily DNS query capacity from 400 billion queries a day to over 4 trillion queries a day and will increase the aggregate network bandwidth of its primary resolution centers around the world from more than 20 gigabits per second (Gbps) to greater than 200 Gbps per second. VeriSign will also expand its deployment of Regional Internet Resolution Sites to more than 100 locations across the globe by 2010. VeriSign is also deploying new proprietary security upgrades and monitoring tools to identify, track and isolate malicious Internet traffic generated from cyber attacks.

Watch out Cyber Attacks!

With less than a month to go, the team at Domain Roundtable is getting ready to host our most exciting line-up to date!

First, let’s talk money – and ways to save!

Save on your conference passes! DomainTools Silver and Gold members receive a discount. Just log into your account and get your discount code. Or, take advantage of our Domain Roundtable survey! Your vote counts in our Name Intelligence Awards. Be heard as we span the industry, looking to see who is the best of the best. Cast your ballot for your favorites, including Best Registrar, Best Forum, Best Industry Media Coverage, Best Blog Community, and Best Parking Company. The best part, though, is receiving $50 off your DRT conference pass as a thank you for your input.

Save on your hotel! We also have discount rates still available for rooms at our host location, The Palace Hotel. However, they are going quickly. The rate is guaranteed until April 1, on a first come first serve basis. Visit our web site for your to reserve your space TODAY! www.domainroundtable.com/2008/venue

Save on your airfare! We’ve had many attendees let us know that they are getting great airfares right now to San Francisco. Check out your favorite airfare shopping site!

Now, updates on what is happening at the conference.

As mentioned in previous posts, we’re shining a spotlight into the future of the industry with a host of speakers offering real expert advice on building manageable and profitable domain portfolios. We at DRT are glad to bring so many great panelists into the Roundtable this year. Here are some highlights:

• We are also happy to announce the return of our CEO Roundtable! Building on the foundation of the panel’s previous success, our team of CEOs will highlight recent trends in American and global economics. Hear the heads in the industry discuss how these trends affect us and get a first-hand prognosis from industry-leading companies on what you can do to increase during economic challenges.
• Matt Cutts, our Google insider, is still accepting your most challenging questions about SEO and Google. Take part in this intimate discussion by submitting your questions to our guest webmaster at: mattcutts [at] domainroundtable.com.
• Get information on alternative monetization opportunities brought to you by DomainStrategies, EVOLanding, Mpire and more!
• Sunday, April 20, see the .ME induction into the ccTLD space. .ME, however, is all about you, and so GoDaddy, the .ME initiator, and DRT invite everyone to take part in this exclusive lunch-time launch. Be there to get all the details and celebrate the sunrise of .ME. Get an insider head start.
• Our array of top domainers, parking experts, and SEO moguls, who bring years of experience and insider tips will discuss all avenues of industry.

Don’t forget the Gamble for Good party for Grassroots.org sponsored by TrafficZ. This casino night fundraiser is bound to be a success — after all, it is a TrafficZ party! There are great prizes being awarded throughout the evening. Plus, music by DJ Matteo, go-go dancers, food and cocktails! Play for a good cause, prizes and bragging rights! Check it all out and register early at the gambleforgood.org.

Plus, the DomainTools Live Auction is on! The team is working daily to put together the list of domains to auction. Stay tuned on that. But, remember that, as an attendee, you get one guaranteed admission into our Live Auction. You can find more information here in the auction section at www.domainroundtable.com/2008/auction.

The countdown is on! We’ll see you there!

For more details on the agenda, our sponsors and location, please visit: www.DomainRoundtable.com/.

We have added the ability to do Dot Asia whois lookups on DomainTools.com. A good example would something like microsoft.asia or money.asia.

The Dot Asia launch is in progress right now, so you may want to reserve your domain at your favorite registrar.

Today is a big day, Fund.com sold for $10,000,000. Well, technically it sold for $9,999,950 in an all-cash transaction, though I am not sure why $50 was withheld from making it an even $10M. Even in this slow market we are seeing record-setting sales figures. A publicly-reported transaction of this size is rare, I know of a few domains well above $10M, such as Poker.com and Sex.com, that never officially disclosed their prices. The few runners-up so far have been Business.com and Porn.com which both didn’t quite make it to the $10 Million dollar range but were very close.

It takes a lot of work to broker a domain at this price, what could have been registered for nothing 20 years ago is now worth more money then one man could spend. The generic domains that command power are these category domains. With our upcoming auction in April at the Domain Roundtable in San Francisco we will be selling a few domains that may set off a price alert. We encourage anyone with great domains who wants liquidity in a Live Auction to contact us. Last year we sold just under $4 million dollars in domain names in a few hours.

Submit your domains, we are sorting through them right now to find the very best. Our Live Auctions are huge and are not to be missed.

The new Senator Snowe Bill titled, “Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act” is loved by a few companies that have famous brands however it is being protested loudly by some domain name investors and privacy groups. If I had to judge the bill just by the name I would be all for it. Who doesn’t want to take out a phisher trying to steal bank account information! However there is more to the bill then just the name.

The legislation is very effective at allowing government agencies to act quickly. The ability to act quickly is the most important feature to take down a phishing group. A government agency can quickly find out who the owner of a domain name is even if it is behind a proxy service. However when talking with a lot of domain owners they feel the bill may be over reaching and impact them adversely. Not only that, they say the bill is redundant because criminal activity like phishing are already illegal. But in an interview with Computer World an aide for the Senator had this to say, “This is not a regulatory bill but an enforcement bill,” the aide said. “It clearly defines phishing and domain abuses as deceptive practices.” As a result, he added, the FTC wouldn’t “have to waste time in court” proving that phishing qualifies as a deceptive practice from a legal standpoint. So the bill is not completely redundant. The bill could have a lot more features and provisions that would make it more fair. In the DMCA for example it requires a sworn statement made “under penalty of perjury” before a hosting service needs to do anything about a copyright complaint. There is nothing to this effect in this bill. Which means that anyone that files a federal case could get a private whois record. However once again anyone that files a federal case already gets the private whois record because registrars that don’t turn it over are held liable instead.

Those domain investors value their privacy and think one of the key features of the bill is unbalanced, they feel that the speed which a government agency can act to remove whois privacy on a domain is undue process. Some domain investors feel the Consumer Protection bill may be an over aggressive Trademark bill in disguise. ISPs and Businesses can also file Federal cases using the legislation if they feel their trademark or business name is being used in a phishing attack. If they are phishing sure, I am all for it, but if they are doing normal business with a generic domain then I would be against it. Generic phrases and words should never qualify as phishing. I am not sure this bill allows Generic dictionary words and GEO-Domains to be subject this anti-phishing legislation…. well unless they are pretending to be some other company and phishing their customers. I am trying to figure out why so many domain investors fear this bill. I think the best thing to do would be setup a debate between Phil Corwin (ICA) and Paul Martino (CADNA). It would be interesting and informational to hear from both sides at the same time. If you guys are listening, let’s setup the debate. Setting the facts straight will allow us all to focus on what needs to be fixed in this legislation.

The honest domainers feel like they are getting caught in the fishing net like dolphins on a bad tuna hunt. I looked around for people that wrote blog posts about the bill and here are a few that I found; Jaikumar Vijayan of Computer World, John Levine, Michael Berkens, Andrew Allemann, Declan McCullagh of CNET, Elliot Silver, Sahar Sarid, Jothan Frakes, Internet Commerce Association, Amy Graham of CADNA, and Mark Fulton

There are a few misconceptions on both sides of the bill. Some of the people that opposed to the bill are not reading all the details sometimes, I found one domain investor saying, “no more parking, no more revenue, it’s all going to end if this thing goes through”. Which indicates there seems to be a bit of an over reactions by a few people. All the more reason for a debate with rational arguments on both sides. As far as I read the bill there is no way to seize a domain name using this legislation, it only allows for fines of $250 per incident during a violation if someone is found guilty of violating the act.

As the bill currently stands I think there are a number of things that could be introduced to improve it. I don’t think the House has a counter-part bill yet, so if a bill was introduced over there that had those new provisions the bills would need to be merged before going to the president for a vote. I suggest those people that oppose the bill support a new version of the bill in the House. I would definitely add sworn statement made “under penalty of perjury” to the bill.

I will post a transcript of the debate as soon as I arrange it.

The domain industry keeps growing. We now have two TV channel websites that create unique content which cover domaining. The first is DomainerTV.com and the other is Page Howe’s DNTV.tv. I am very impressed by the level of detail these sites have launched with in very little time. DomainerTV interviewed me while I was attending the TrafficZ party in Las Vegas. I talked about the up coming Domain Roundtable event and what DomainTools working on.

We have seen a lot in this last year, there are at least 50 industry blogs, 3 Domain Magazines, and now 2 TV channels. The media will continue to grow as domains continue to increase in value. I think we are far from the real value of domains.

Inspired by last year’s $20,000 success, Domain Roundtable is back at it again! So, get ready to press your luck Saturday, April 19 as you are invited to Gamble for Good at the Domain Roundtable Conference.

For the event, DRT has teamed up with TrafficZ and Grassroots.org to give attendees exclusive access to Club 443, San Francisco’s hottest nighttime spot. With a full open bar, craps, cards, roulette, and music by San Francisco’s favorite DJ Matteo, guests can get down to some risky business without chancing a loss.

No, at Gamble for Good, you can’t lose. We’re proud to say that all proceeds from the evening go directly to Grassroots.org, the tech industry’s leading charity organization. Grassroots.org is a national nonprofit campaign which seeks to empower charity organizations, and help them reach their financial and philanthropic goals, via current technology, savvy web-based marketing innovation, and a focused network of similar supportive web sites and organizations.

Casino games and raffles will be provided. Prize packages, totaling nearly $10,000 so far, include:

• One year of VO1000 Phone.com Subscriptions ($39.88 per month value)

• 20 hours of SEO consulting from SEO.com (value of $5000)

• One-year DomainTools.com Gold Membership (valued at $292)

• Domain Roundtable Future Conference registration (valued at $1000)

• 20 hours of web design by Graphics.net ($2000 value)

• Black Sabbath autographed CD ($150 value)
  

• Shania Twain autographed lyrics (value of $100)

• Rick Reilly autographed books ($60 each, $200 for collection)

Also, any attendees who register on or before Friday, April 17th will be recognized on the Grassroots.org website with a text-based link!

Domain Roundtable and Grassroots.org offer special thanks go to TrafficZ for sponsoring this event. Founded in 2001, TrafficZ is one of the oldest and most experienced domain parking and traffic monetization services in business today. Since its inception, TrafficZ has remained at the forefront of the domain industry, driven by an unyielding dedication to provide innovative products, cutting-edge technology, unparalleled service and best-in-class monetization. Widely regarded as a pioneering force, TrafficZ continually strives to maximize the potential of each and every domain asset by identifying its highest and best use and extracting maximum value for its clients. TrafficZ partners enjoy unsurpassed customer service, a renowned templating system, near-limitless customization options, dynamic and flexible content management solutions, SEO functionality, advanced auto-optimization technology, a comprehensive suite of domain analytics and, last but not least, industry-leading payouts.

So, play cards, place some bets, win prizes, make a difference in the world!

Interested in donating prizes or funds? Please contact support@grassroots.org for details.

For more information on registration or donations, please visit: http://www.domainroundtable.com/2008/gambleforgood

Betting on change,

The Domain Roundtable Team

A lot of domainers don’t want to talk about their favorite tools for fear that they will create more competition. Here is one of those cases.

Peter Askew of Domainer’s Gazette said this in his last blog post, “I debated whether to share this info or not, but darn it, it helps me, and – in the end – I wanna help the domainer community, so what the hell, I’ll share it. One great angle researching domains is targeting really old domains. Domains that have been registered for more than – say – 8 years or so….” – Full Source