I read today that YP.com was recently sold for $3,850,000 to YellowPages.com. I know 2 character domains are worth a lot but that’s a crazy amount.
In the UK yellowpages.co.uk redirects to Yell.com, which is how YellowPages has marketed itself online in the last few years. The USA Yellow Pages is hosted at yellowpages.com but now that they have YP.com, perhaps they will rebrand their site in the future.
Regardless of the size and wealth of a company, no one spashes out 4 million dollars on a domain unless they have something planned for it. It will be interesting to see what they do with it.
I got an email today from Domaining.com, the popular domain name news aggregator.
Hello Kevin Muldoon,
A quick note to tell you the Domaining.com membership is no longer free!
All has a end, it’s now time for us to charge an annual fee.
It will help us pay our bills but also secure our site where new exciting services for registered domainers should be available soon.
As a result free accounts have been closed today, you’ll no longer receive our newsletter.
You are invited to sign up again if you are serious about domaining.
Ah I forgot, don’t panic, we are only asking a $35 annual fee.
Best wishes for the new year,
Francois Carrillo
Domaining.com
It wasn’t a website I read regularly so this change doesn’t really concern me. However, I was very surprised to see them adapt this model. As Reece points out :
Reducing the advertising rates seems to be the best choice. Instead of $100/day to have a sponsored headline, cut it to $50/day. Instead of $1400/week for a banner ad, make it $500/week. The banner advertising prices ($1400/week) is simply too hgh — it wasn’t selling during the good times and we’re now in a recession, so it’ll have to be cut that much more…
I have to agree. A lot of Domainers do have more money than some webmasters out there but they aren’t stupid and $1,400 a week is crazy. If they weren’t selling ads at these prices they should have dropped them.
I wish them the best with their new model but I wouldn’t be surprised if they reverted to an ad based model in a few months time as $35 is pretty steep for information which can be found elsewhere on the web.
I was really surprised to see that Digg.org was recently caught by Pool. Surely their admin team should be looking to renew this domain extension, even if it only generates a little traffic every month.
I’m sure Digg.org will go for a pretty penny when it is put up for backorder. A lot of domainers are warning against bidding for it as Digg could take the buyer to court and just take the domain back from them, but will they? Digg.net has been registered by someone else for ages and Digg haven’t tried to get the domain from them and Digg.info leads you to the network site of David Russell.
So perhaps it is worth bidding for Digg but I’d personally be reluctant to spend a lot on it incase it is just snatched away from me.
I read a few days ago that Scotland may be getting it’s own tld. The extension would be called .scot or .sco. The first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, was recently in the Catalonian region of Spain, which got it’s own .cat domain extension 2 years ago, and was impressed to see that it has has since seen over 30,000 registrations.
I was surprised to see this announcement since the uk already has a .co.uk extension however I for one welcome it. I’m not sure if they would restrict registrations to Scottish individuals and companies but domainers usually find a way around that kind of thing anyways.
If the bid for the domain with ICANN next year is successful then perhaps we will see an application for a regional domain name from Northern Ireland, Wales and England too. Companies which do business all over the UK would still prefer the .co.uk extension though I’m sure companies who’s business is more local would be interested in it.
Last week Google announced that they are extending adSense for domains to all publishers. Normally new advertising options are welcomed by the webmaster community but domainers have been less than pleased with Google moving into this market.
Many domainers believe that this is bad for the domain industry and will be the first step in Google getting a stranglehold in the industry.
DNKitchen
I will be the first to go on record and say that this time next year parking companies will be obsolete. Does this mean run and move all of your domain names to Google, absolutely not. Just like anything new it has to be tested and tweaked several times before its right.
As of now you will still gain more traffic and money by parking companies. With a parking company you have more control over the keywords used, optimization, visual appearance and content.
Many believe that this within a few years Google will have complete control over the parked market. Biggedon, a moderator over at DNForum, said
Don’t be so quick to thank google. On the surface, it seems great for domainers but once everyone is on the googlewagon, then that’s when they will have complete control. As by then, they will have eliminated the middlemen between us and them and many domainers will be dependent on G.
Once that happens, they will start to implement new policies and standards. Some or most you may not like it in the end, they are definetly looking for ways to monopolize internet traffic
At the moment this option is only available to USA based domainers but when they roll out in the UK I’m going to try it. Until then, I am going to reserve judgement. Though I understand why many are concerned about google moving into the domain parking sector.
There have been a lot of domain name thefts in the last year or so. I spoke about 2 of them recently on Blogging Tips in my post How secure is your domain name?.
The best way to reduce the chances of your domain being stolen is to be proactive and make it more difficult for hijackers to steal your property. And domainer Reece Berg has created a blog to help you all do just that. The blog is called Domain Name Scams. If you are looking to find out more about how you can protect your domain name and how you can buy and sell domain names safely, I recommend checking it out.
Link : Domain Name Scams
NameCheap yesterday announced a huge $17,000 contest yesterday via a press release. They are planning on giving out $17,000 in prizes everyday from December 1st to December 25th via Twitter.
So to take part in this competition all you have to do is follow NameCheap on Twitter and answer their questions correctly when they post them 
NameCheap.com to Offer $17,000 Worth of Domains, Hosting and Transfers, Free on Twitter.com
NameCheap.com, a leading provider of domain names and web hosting, will be giving over $17,000 worth of domain names in the “Twitter Trivia Holiday GiveAway”. Up to three domain names, hosting packages or transfers will be given away each hour 24 hours a day from December 1st through December 25th.
In order to win a free domain name, hosting package or domain transfer, Twitter users simply have to answer a trivia question pertaining to the holiday season. The first users to answer correctly win. Like every domain or transfer at NameCheap.com, winners will also get free WhoisGuard Protection to keep their identity safe and a free Comodo PositiveSSL for more secured transactions online. The questions will start off easy and will progressively become more difficult. The Twitter user who answers the most questions correctly will also win an iPod Nano.
With so many prizes on offer, I think we are all in with a good chance of winning a prize. There are currently 174 subscribers to their Twitter account but I suspect this figure will grow very quickly. Good luck to those who take part
Link : http://twitter.com/namecheap
* Thanks to Domain Name News for bringing this to my attention
I like to pay attention to the latest domain sales. They are a great indication of what domains companies are looking for and what kind of price they are willing to pay for them.
Here is a list of some of the largest domain sales this month
- Kredit.de : $1.17 million – ‘Kredit’ has the same meaning in German as it’s English counterpart ‘Credit’, which explains the huge price for this domain.
- LowFare.com : $365,000 – Sold on Sedo (via Great Domains). I don’t personally think this is a great domain but it’s short, it’s brandable and that’s something which airline and travel companies need when launching a new service. LowFares.com already exists as a website though I don’t believe it was bought from the same people who own that site. I’m sure the seller will be happy with the price of this sale regardless!
- Banners.com : $360,000 – I was a bit suprised at this domain selling for such a high price. It is a great domain, no doubt about it, but it’s not a domain which is in a profitable niche. Would a design company pay this kind of money for this domain?
- Acne.info : $10,000 – I saw this being advertised on DNForum a few weeks ago. I actually think $10k is a good price for this. There is a big market for acne products and information and if the buyer spends some time developing this site he should be able to get a lot of search engine traffic and make a lot of affiliate sales.
Some more sales from DN Journal :
If you look through the list at DNJournal you will see that although com domain extensions remain the highest priced, many local domain extensions are selling very well. For example, Scott Jones, who writes for the fantastic Self Made Minds, has picked up quite a few premium .co.uk domain names recently including pcs.co.uk.
It’s encouraging to see non .com domains selling well because it’s very difficult to get a .com domain at a good price nowadays
