Contents January to February 2009

Volume 3, issue 1

Features
12. To Renew or Not to Renew
Renewal season isn’t fun for anyone, but it’s especially tedious
when you have more names than days in the year (let alone
more names than seats at Wembley Stadium). Here are some
tips to make the process a little less painful.

16. The State of PPC

We’ve been hearing it since before 2008: “The death of PPC”.
While PPC has been on the decline, what’s the real status as
we head into 2009?

24. 2008 - The Year in Review

With PPC slash-and-burn, The Snowe Bill, and ICANN’s plans
to open up the TLD extensions, 2008 has been exciting to say
the least. This article reviews the headliners from 2008 and
the effects they’ll have on the industry moving forward…

30. Location, Location, Location!

Geodomaining may not be a new concept, but it’s still a hot
one. Check out our guide to see how this tactic can work for
you.

38. Taking the “Lead”

While PPC may be floundering, generating targeted customer
information is another growing opportunity. Read more about
it in part one of our guide to Pay-Per-Lead programs.

4 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com

 Contents January to February 2009
Issue 013

Departments
8. Editor’s Note
The start of an exciting new year.

10. Top 50 Domain Sales

The final quarter of 2008 registered a second seven-figure
domain sale after none had been reported at that level in the
2nd and 3rd quarters of the year.
by Ron Jackson, Editor/Publisher - DNJournal

43. Rookies and Big Tickets

Is it possible to hand-reg a million dollar name today? Don’t
count on it.

by Kevin Ohashi

46. The DoMAIN EVENT

Featuring pictures from 2008’s T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Down Under
convention, all the way from Australia!

48. Domainer’s Toolbox: 5 Great Registrars

A quick review of five domain name Registrars.

58. Rants and Raves

If you’re new to domaining and you’re looking for a get-rich-
quick scheme, you might want to think twice.
by Mike St. John

Utility Features
53. The Domainer’s Calendar
An events calendar new to Domainer’s Magazine, courtesy of
DNCalendar.com

55. Domain Sales / Classifieds

Special featured listings of domains currently for sale

57. Advertiser’s Index

A list of all advertisers in the current issue

6 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com

s-l-design.de

… more than 150 Top Level Domains

available – worldwide.

The World
of Domain
Names.

www.ud.com
Department: Editor’s Note

And Many Happy Returns...

Onward to the 3rd year of continuing to deliver you the news and
ins and outs of our industry.
Editors-in-Chief
When we started this magazine we decided that our mission would be: Jerry J. Nolte Jr.
Mike St. John
“to publish a world-class information resource that serves as the eyes
and ears of the industry. Our magazine will focus on the value of Pay Per Art Director / Publisher
Click Management, SEO, Domain Legal Expertise, Domain acquisition and Joe Callan
Selling, Domain monetization and any other topic that focuses on emerging
technologies and services that provides value to you, The Domainer.” Advertising
Cindy Nolte
In trying to accomplish our goal, we have had many great changes/
additions over the past volume. Our print magazine is still producing great Contributing Writers
articles and features, tips and tricks, and of course let us not forget, some Ron Jackson
“Rants and Raves”. While we view Domainer’s Magazine as an integral tool Kevin Ohashi
in informing the rest of the world that domaining is a “real industry”, we also Mike St. John
recognized the importance of bringing you the latest news quickly. In an Jerry J. Nolte Jr.
effort to ensure that you receive updated news in a timely manner, we have Denyse Parisi
updated our website. The new website’s launch was a resounding success
and continues to grow in hits every day. We thank you for your years of
supporting the print magazine and over recent months for also for stopping
by our website from time to time to see what‘s new in-between issues.

As always this issue is packed with great information from our writers!
We’re always happy to take suggestions for new articles and we appreciate
the reader feedback we’ve been recieving. Continue to fill us in and tell
us about what you need to know more about; your input assists us in our
continued efforts for excellence here at Domainer’s Magazine. So keep those To advertise, subscribe or obtain
emails coming! reprints, call (877) 919-2619 or visit
domainersmagazine.com

Also, we have our pictorial for TRAFFIC DOWN UNDER this issue as well
as a look back at 2008, some tips on Pay-Per-Lead services, and a guide to
Geodomains. Contact Information
I won’t keep you any longer. On to the “meat” of the magazine… Domainer’s Magazine
103 Pennsylvania Ave.
Enjoy! Matamoras PA, 18336

1-877-919-2619

Editors
editor@domainersmagazine.com

Advertising
advertising@domainersmagazine.com

Art Department
design@domainersmagazine.com

While every effort has been made to ensure the

accuracy of the contents of this publication, the
publisher will accept no responsibility for any
errors or omissions, or for any loss or damage,
consequential or otherwise, suffered as a result
of any material published here. The information
published by Domainer’s Magazine is not intended
as a substitute for legal, accounting, tax or other
professional advice. The publisher assumes
no responsibility for statements made by
advertisers in business competition. All editorial
submissions, whether solicited or unsolicited,
become the property of Domainer’s Magazine.
Statements and opinions expressed herein are
not necessarily those of Domainer’s Magazine,
its affiliates, advertisers or any other agent. The
entire content of this publication is protected by
copyright; full details are available through the
publisher. All rights reserved. These trademarks
or copyright materials may not be used in any
media for any purpose without the express
written consent of Domainer’s Magazine.

© Domainer’s Magazine, 2007-9

8 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com

 Department: Top Domain Name Sales

Top 50 Domain Sales Since Our Last Issue and the Best 50 Year-To-Date
The final quarter of 2008 registered a second seven-figure domain sale after none had been
reported at that level in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the year. The new million dollar plus
name is also the year’s highest country code sale to date.
By Ron Jackson, Editor/Publisher - DNJournal

Last issue we told you about the $1,015,000 sale of Invest.
com through Sedo’s GreatDomains platform – the first sale
over $1 million since the opening quarter of 2008. This issue
we can tell you about another seven-figure blockbuster that
also goes on the 4Q-2008 books – Kredit.de at a whopping
$1,169,175 via Sedo.com. That sale also ranks as the highest
ccTLD sale reported so far this year (with just a few days in
December still to go as of this writing).
We also saw ten six-figure sales over the past 60 days with
another country code domain in that group; FreeCreditReport.
co.uk, a name that commanded $300,000 through the
AfternicDLS. Sedo wound up with the top three sales in
this reporting period, adding LowFare.com ($365,000) and

Top 50 Reported Domain Sales for the Two-Month Period Ending October 1, 2008
Domain Name Sold For Date Reported Where Sold

Kredit.de $1,169,175 11/24/2008 Sedo

LowFare.com $365,000 11/10/2008 Sedo
Banners.com $360,000 11/10/2008 Sedo
freecreditreport.co.uk $300,000 10/13/2008 AfternicDLS
Alice.com $250,000 11/10/2008 Pvt Sale
MCC.com $195,000 10/13/2008 RickLatona/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
pisos.net $187,500 11/10/2008 Sedo
moneywatch.com $125,000 10/27/2008 Sedo
camps.com $110,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
LT.com $100,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
cleaning.com $100,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
ud.com $99,000 10/13/2008 Sedo
loto.com $91,331 11/24/2008 SnapNames
searching.com $85,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
CountryClubs.com $85,000 10/13/2008 RickLatona/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
birthdaypresents.com $80,000 11/3/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C. NY
HelpMe.com $75,000 10/27/2008 DNStrategy
sparesorts.com $70,590 10/27/2008 SnapNames
sax.com $70,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
plans.com $70,000 11/3/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C. NY
freecreditreports.co.uk $70,000 10/13/2008 AfternicDLS
date.me $70,000 11/3/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C. NY
breaks.com $68,000 10/13/2008 Sedo/GreatDomains
literature.com $60,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
faire-part.com $59,056 10/27/2008 Sedo
news.se $55,802 10/13/2008 NameDrive
machineryzone.com $52,000 10/13/2008 Sedo
vida.com $50,100 11/24/2008 NameJet
DirectBrands.com $50,000 11/3/2008 Optimo.com
abl.com $50,000 11/24/2008 Sedo
NAP.com $47,500 10/13/2008 RickLatona/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
us.org $45,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
goodle.com $40,200 10/6/2008 NameJet
microphone.com $40,000 11/3/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C. NY
clarinet.com $40,000 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
all-in.com $40,000 11/3/2008 Sedo
comos.com $35,000 10/27/2008 AfternicDLS
claudia.com $35,000 10/13/2008 SnapNames
freeporntube.com $34,800 11/10/2008 NameJet
Store.se $34,000 10/13/2008 NameDrive
ceo.info $32,500 10/27/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
aed.nl $31,875 11/10/2008 Sedo
voyance.net $31,250 11/10/2008 Sedo
rencontre.org $31,250 11/10/2008 Sedo
glow.co.uk $31,015 11/24/2008 Sedo
Illinois.org $31,000 11/3/2008 Aftermarket.com
Fotograf.se $30,600 10/13/2008 NameDrive
CMDX.com $30,350 11/10/2008 Moniker
newyorkrestaurants.com $30,240 10/27/2008 SnapNames
browsershots.org $30,175 10/27/2008 Moniker

10 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com

 Department: Top Domain Name Sales

Banners.com ($360,000) to their landmark sale of Kredit.de In the chart on page 10 you can review all of the top 50
(.de is the ccTLD extension for Germany). sales since the last issue of Domainer’s Magazine.

In another example of the fact that there is life beyond
the dominant .com extension, Pisos.net sold for $187,500 at
Sedo in the second highest .net sale of 2008 to date. Pisos is
Spanish for “apartments” so it is obviously a great keyword
for the rapidly growing Hispanic market.
Top 50 Sales of 2008
Now let’s look at the top 50 sales reported so far in 2008.
The numbers are strong, with all 50 names cracking the six-
figure barrier and four of them reaching seven figures.

Top 50 Sales of 2008

Domain Name Sold For Date Reported Where Sold

Fund.com $9,999,950 3/10/2008 Pvt Sale
DataRecovery.com $1,659,000 3/3/2008 Pvt Sale
Kredit.de $1,169,175 11/24/2008 Sedo
Cruises.co.uk $1,099,798 2/4/2008 Pvt Sale
Invest.com $1,015,000 9/29/2008 Sedo
SkiResorts.com $850,000 4/7/2008 Moniker
Printer.com $800,000 8/25/2008 Pvt Sale
ireport.com $750,000 1/28/2008 Pvt Sale
Casino.de $625,060 3/17/2008 Pvt Sale
Jobs.ca $600,000 5/5/2008 Pvt Sale
Affiliate.com $579,900 8/25/2008 Moniker
tell.com $400,000 6/30/2008 Sedo
Systematic.com $400,000 3/31/2008 Pvt Sale
porn.net $400,000 2/11/2008 SnapNames
domainregistration.com $376,480 7/14/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East
LowFare.com $365,000 11/10/2008 Sedo
Banners.com $360,000 11/10/2008 Sedo
Phones.co.uk $344,710 7/7/2008 Pvt Sale
770.com $343,208 4/14/2008 Sedo
RVRental.com $325,000 9/8/2008 Pvt Sale
173 .com $302,790 2/11/2008 Moniker
iSearch.com $300,000 8/25/2008 Pvt Sale
freecreditreport.co.uk $300,000 10/13/2008 AfternicDLS
DVDs.com $300,000 3/31/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
bookmarks.com $300,000 2/11/2008 SnapNames
triplecreditreport .com $260,000 8/11/2008 Nokta
Alice.com $250,000 11/10/2008 Pvt Sale
Action.com $230,000 7/28/2008 Moniker
InsuranceRates.com $225,000 6/9/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
ar.com $225,000 2/11/2008 SnapNames
OD.com $220,000 8/25/2008 Sedo
CPC.com $201,750 6/2/2008 Moniker
Thin.com $200,000 3/10/2008 RickLatona.com
ov .com $200,000 6/9/2008 Sedo
Bj.com $200,000 9/8/2008 Moniker/Internext
photograph.com $195,000 2/11/2008 SnapNames
MCC.com $195,000 10/13/2008 RickLatona/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
WT.com $192,000 7/14/2008 Pvt Sale
880.com $188,888.88 8/18/2008 Marchex
11.com $188,888.88 8/18/2008 Pvt Sale
pisos.net $187,500 11/10/2008 Sedo
Offer.com $180,000 3/24/2008 Moniker/AS
444.com $178,888.89 8/18/2008 Marchex
Tests.com $176,505 3/17/2008 Sedo
248.com $175,000 6/2/2008 Sedo
auto .es $173,682 6/30/2008 Sedo
rainbow.com $170,000 6/16/2008 Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
245.com $168,888.88 8/18/2008 Pvt Sale
Shoppers.com $166,000 3/10/2008 Pool
Sexe.org $151,400 6/16/2008 Pvt Sale

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 11

Feature: To Renew or Not to Renew
To Renew or Not to Renew
That is the question, whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of poorly
performing domains, or to let expire the sea of troubles, and by non-renewal, drop them?
Maybe that’s a little melodramatic, but it’s a question most
of us face once a year. Should you renew your domains or
should you let them go? Should you develop or auction?
Let some go and hold on to others? Will you regret it if you
let your domains go and the market demand recovers later?
These are questions we ask ourselves at least once a year.
Why Let Go?
The obvious reason is the economic downturn that we are
currently experiencing and the trickle down effect it’s having
on other markets. Of course, the Lehman Brothers’ downfall
and the succeeding economic crisis that swept the world and
various industries did not affect domainers directly, or even
on the same wavelength as stockholders. It all depends on
the market position of a given portfolio.
Domainers who have relied heavily on public funding and
investment from venture capitalists have naturally been hit
hard. Their investors are in the thick of things, and if they’ve
been negatively impacted by the economic slide, they might
be more reluctant to jump into any additional risks. On the
bright side, domainers who have privately owned and funded
small- and medium-size domain portfolios were probably not
hit as hard unless they’ve invested directly in failed ventures.
Otherwise, they have not been hit as badly as those who were
invested in big banking or those whose capital comes from
hedge funds and other value-swap ventures.
Even though it’s been on the decline in recent years,
PPC advertising shows a glimmer of stability in spite of the
economic downturn. As offline businesses clamor for more
cost-effective advertising strategies, online advertising
and marketing—including PPC schemes from which most
domainers earn advertising income—become more and more
attractive as alternatives to traditional advertising media.
Sometimes it’s easier to justify $2.00 a click than $140,000
for a 15- or 30-second television slot. We can expect the
online advertising industry to grow (however slowly); while
tech expenditures are slowing down, people who already
have computers and internet connections are not leaving
the internet anytime soon. The internet public is here to
stay, and a strong audience remains one of the linchpins for
online advertising. The value of domain properties, while
comparatively lower than one or two years ago, did not suffer
the same decline as that of real estate properties. By all
indications then, the domain market is in good shape.
In the current state of the economy, however, costs of
living are rising and some part-time domainers have lost their
full-time jobs. Many of us, indirectly at the very least, are
feeling the current economic problems. Registries are also
raising the price of domain registration this year, and that’s
certainly an added burden. The industry as a whole may not
be feeling the squeeze, but most of us domainers are, indeed,
feeling the pinch.
As investors, we really don’t want to let any of our domains
go. The domain industry is still showing signs of positive
growth and we naturally want to be part of it. So while it
makes no sense to leave the domaining industry now, it does
make sense to trim our holdings down. Now is the right time
to be wise. We can let some of our domains go and hold
12 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
on to those which are worth keeping, or we can refuse to
let anything go and keep paying on a few poor or marginal
domain investments. A wise domainer might apply an old
chess strategy that says: “sometimes you have to sacrifice
the Queen to save the King.” If you’re really wise, though, all
you may have to let go are pawns.
Of course, if you have no money problems and you can hold
on to your domains for as long as you care to do so, you’re
obviously reading the wrong article. Just renew all of your
domains (and if you’re not hurting for capital, it might also
be a good idea to use some of that money for development).
On the other hand, if you have an overwhelming list of
domains and cannot afford to renew all of them, then you
need to choose carefully. There are some domains that
are obviously valuable even without a detailed analysis:
creditcard.com is just one example. If you own domains of
the same ilk (high-power keyword terms, simple phrases,
6-character domains or less), then you obviously have to
hold on to them. For the rest of your domains, however, you
will need a more developed system of elimination. If you’re
looking at that long list and dreading making the cut, the
following advice might help you along.
When is it time to let go?
How do you choose which domain names to renew and
which names to let go? Well, to start, you have information
on how your domain properties have performed so far. This
can be a valuable evaluation tool, but also keep in mind
whether you’re dealing with a parked site or a well-developed
one, your decisions should be based on both the theoretical
and actual value of the domain names you’re looking to cut.
The ‘theoretical’ part of the assessment should consist of
similar factors to the ones you considered when you chose the
name in the first place. Just be cautious: there’s no such thing
as standard criteria in this assignment of “value”. You cannot
use a single measure of worth; typically, the value of any
domain—whether it is to be a new acquisition or whether it is
to be bought from the aftermarket—is based on a combination
of factors. Give yourself plenty of time before you have to
renew a group of hundreds or thousands of names, because
with a hurried cut-and-run strategy, you may inadvertently
drop a cash cow go and keep a white elephant aboard.
The decision process is a careful balance: choose renewal
domains based on potential (i.e. your theory about what
makes this particular domain name valuable) and if possible,
raw data (i.e. the domain names’ actual performance). A
decision based on both theoretical and actual value is bound
to be the wisest one.
What makes a name worth it?
There are plenty of traits that make a “good name”. We
see them mentioned in discussions pertaining to the quality
of domain names; specifically, what makes a name a smart
investment. These factors are in no particular order, and this
list isn’t by any means comprehensive, but it will give you a
good framework for determining who stays and who goes.

Length: The length of domain names is always an important
factor. We’ve heard it all before: a short domain name is a
good domain name. Thus, a one-word domain like mortgage.
com (which is currently CitiGroup’s property) is more valuable
than a related two-word name like mortgagerates.com.
Three-word domain names run further down the domain
name-value ladder. In that sense, instantmortgagerates.com
ranks lower than the first two.
But hey, two-word and even three-word domain names
can still be great investments. On the other hand, there are
one-word domains that have little market value; consider
sprachgefuhls.com. If you take such a domain name, your
most verbally inclined friends are bound to tell you that you
don’t have sprachgefuhls (which ironically means “a sense of
what is linguistically appropriate”).
So even in some cases short doesn’t always equate to
good. Let’s consider some other factors.
Meaning and commercial value: Does a domain name have
meaning? What we mean here is: does it have meaning for a
group of people or does it hold any cultural familiarity? Most
importantly, do people use it and does it evoke a common
connotation among them?
In this sense, you can see why instantmortgagerates.com
beats sprachgefuhls.com. Even freeinstantmortagequotes.
com wins if you take popular usage into consideration.
This doesn’t illustrate that sprachgefuhls is meaningless,
but it does mean that to most English speakers,
“freeinstantmortgagequotes” says a whole lot more than
“sprachgefuhls”.
Feature: To Renew or Not to Renew
But just because you have a domain name that does not
mean much to a lot of people, don’t chuck it immediately.
You also have to take that domain name’s performance
into consideration. Even if a domain name does not have
meaning to the general cross-section of people, it may have
meaning for a considerable base of people. If that base of
people seek and find your name, then you may still have a
winner there. This especially applies to business terms such
as ‘repo rates’ that can be meaningful to enough people to
make it profitable.
Industry: If you own short and meaningful domain
names that belong to highly competitive industries, then they
should obviously stay in your portfolio. However, if you have
short and meaningful domains that do not belong to highly
competitive industries, then you’ll need to see performance
indicators. Furthermore, you have to ascertain that there
either is no competition for that term or that there’s no
foreseeable way for that term to become highly in demand in
the future. A domain name like hydrogen.com was already
good, but due to the relatively recent technological buzz, it
has become really good. Nevertheless, someone who had
no prescience about how important of a buzzword it would
become (especially online) would have probably found it easy
to toss it aside for four or low-five figures.
Sensible expression: This can actually be considered
part of the above “meaning” factor. However, in this case,
we are talking about expressions – two-, three-, or n-word
phrases that people use in the course of their daily lives.
If you have phrasal domain names rather than one-word
domains, you should assess them for ‘sense’ and usage. If
people are going to look for products, services or information
that you will around which your PPC campaign will revolve,
are they going to use that phrase?
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 13
Feature: To Renew or Not to Renew

also not a great idea. Mortgager8s.com is an example of a

Take the domain names boatloanrates.com and
loanboatrates.com. Obviously, the former makes more of
an impact and is more memorable. It’s viable to imagine
someone sitting down at a browser and searching for “boat
loan rates”, but would this same person ever look for “loan
boat rates”? When we say “sensible expression,” this is what
we mean.
The different forms of the word also qualify for discussion
under this criterion. Between swingingsingle.com and
swingingsingles.com, the latter makes more sense. Likewise,
between wed.com and wedding.com, wedding.com makes
more sense. Weddings.com makes is even better. When
it comes to sensible expressions, the name of the game is
natural usage.
Brandability: When choosing which domains to renew
and let go, brandable domains should be at the bottom of your
list. Unless you are thinking of developing your brand, then
there’s no use maintaining a ‘brandable’ domain name. The
value of such domains is realized after successful branding –
not before. Your target buyers for such a domain can simply
register a nonsensical domain and build a brand around it;
why would they buy your domain?
Comparable value: Get your list of domains out and look
for other domains that may be similar to it in length, industry,
meaning, and sensibility. How much are such domains worth
in the market? If they are fetching more than you are, find
out why. Have their owners developed these domains? If so,
can you do the same thing—if there’s space left in the industry
for your own domain, that is. Generally, if domain names with
comparable quality and similar attributes to yours are valued
highly, then yours can probably be just as valuable.
Domain name extension: The domain name extension
matters. Dot com domain names are still king. Country-
code domains are okay, but under normal circumstances
you will have to develop them and market them to the right
audience if you want to realize their full value. If the domain
name is short, meaningful, commercially valuable, and highly
competitive in the country depicted by the ccTLD extension,
it goes without saying that it’s a keeper. Likewise, if you have
a domain like baseballcards.cn, it might be time to let it go.
If a different version of your domain name exists and
is owned by a different individual, then you have to think
about the effect of this domain to you. If your domain is the
.com, then you have a slight edge. If you’ve got the .net or
.org version, it might be best to let your domain go unless
you have big development plans (or, better yet, sell it to the
holder of the .com) If, on the other hand, you own different
versions of a .com domain name, it might be safe to let the
other versions go.
Final note: If you have typo domains, especially those
of trademarked terms and copyrighted domain names,
you’d better let them go now. Not only are they draining
your resources, they are also putting you at risk for some
expensive legal action. Of course, it’s a different matter
if your typo is not really a typo. For instance, goggle.com
would only be a safe bet if you’re intentionally building a site
around underwater exploration (or maybe lab safety).
domain that should be dropped. Suffixed and hyphenated
domain names are also of doubtful value. For instance,
econtentwriter.com is not very valuable unless you have time
to develop it; content-writer.com is also less valuable than
just plain ContentWriter.com.
But Don’t Ignore the Data...
After you have made your assessment of the potential
value of domains, you should now assess their actual value.
In any case, this step will probably involve only the domains
that you are thinking of dropping.
Pagerank: Does your domain have page rank? Is it high
enough to be valuable? You should probably hold on to any
domain with a page rank of 7 or higher.
Traffic: Is your domain getting high volumes of traffic? If
you have high traffic yet low click-through rates, then perhaps
you should shift to a CPM scheme and then continually update
your site to increase your return traffic share.
Offers: If someone is offering to buy your domains, then
that means that your domain is worth something to somebody.
Investigate why the other party wants your domain before
jumping into the sale; this may lead you to the monetization
opportunity that you have been waiting for.
Revenues: If the domain is earning its keep – that’s
registration, hosting and other administrative costs – then why
should you let it go? Of course, you have to be vigilant when
it comes to domain registration and hosting prices. There
should be a considerable margin between your revenues and
your costs for each domain you let remain.
Getting rid of unwanted domains
Hopefully (and sometimes after much kicking and
screaming) you’ve now drawn a list of the domains you’re
going to keep and the domains that you’re tossing. Of course,
the easiest thing to do with your orphaned names would be
to simply let them expire. If you do this though, you’re out
the cost or registration at the very least. So instead of letting
drop-catchers snatch your domains, why don’t you try selling
them? Getting back the money on your investments is better
than a final expiration notice.
If you have a blog, write about your domains. If you are
a member of forums, discuss your domains there. You can
set up a ‘sale day’ when other people can choose the domains
they like for a good price.
If you want to get rid of them in one go, lump them
together in one package and sell all of them to a single buyer.
Bulk pricing might give you less money than you could get if
you sell each domain individually, but If you’ve got a bear of
a portfolio, you may end up ahead in such an arrangement.
Trying to sell off your unwanted domains one at a time can
make those calendar pages turn a little more quickly, and at
the end of your 12 months, you may not be getting anything
from some of them.

Furthermore, it would be best to get rid of domains which

are abbreviated versions of generic and premium domains.
If you have crdtcrd.com, let it go. Number substitution is

14 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 15
Feature: State of the Pay-Per-Click

The State of Pay-Per-Click

Marketing Vox has predicted that online advertising expenditures would reach $65 billion
this year, and this same figure was JMP Securities’ 2005 projection about internet advertising
expenditures for 2010. If we are to base our analysis on these figures, it seems that the
internet advertising industry is growing at a much faster rate than expected.

However, how do we reconcile these figures to the Internet

Advertising Bureau’s report that overall advertising spending
online has actually decreased this year? How do we reconcile
this to various domain parking services’ reports that their
PPC ad earnings are continuing to shrink? In the report by
the Internet Advertising Bureau, it was shown that search
advertising has remained robust. Google is therefore taking
in as much—if not more money—from online advertising as
usual. It is, after all, the top choice for search marketing.
Yahoo, some say, is now like the living dead; it is simply
biding its time before it actually folds.
Where is the advertising money going? What is causing
the decline in the domainers’ PPC earnings? Is PPC dead?
PPC, while not entirely dead, is certainly heading for the
ICU. Online advertising may be pouring in, but that cash-
flow no longer pressurizing the PPC pipeline. Even if PPC
advertising remains the advertisers’ top choice among the
various internet advertising methods, parked-page PPC is not
keeping up with the trend. In other words, while PPC is not
dead, domainers are scraping the bottom of the war-chest
that it once built. As always with changes in a young industry,
there are a few reasons for this trend.
but committed a typo error when they typed the name in their
URL bar. Such visitors would reach the parked domain where
a clickable link to Amazon.com would probably be included.
The visitors would then click on the Amazon.com link. The
parked domain’s owner will earn revenues from those clicks
and Amazon, ironically, will be charged for traffic that was
intending to go to Amazon in the first place. In other words,
they are paying unnecessarily for typo domain traffic.
Click fraud and typo domains are the main reasons why
advertisers are leery of parked domain services. The domainers
who have engaged in such activities have given the rest of
us a bad label as revenue leeches, and now advertisers are
complaining about traffic coming from parked domains. Even
if a legitimate high-quality domain name sends thousands of
users to an advertiser’s site every day (and even if a significant
percentage of this traffic is converting,) the advertisers often
still perceive such traffic to be bad. Many advertisers think
that traffic from parked domains is bad traffic, and they’ve
made these sentiments known to Google and Yahoo—the two
major ad networks that serve ads to parked domains. It was
basically a ‘do something or else’ type of pressure that was
brought to bear on Google and Yahoo.

Google makes things a lot harder for domainers:

In March 2008, Google responded by giving their AdWords
Google and Yahoo Looking Out for #1 clients a way to opt out of parked domain advertising. Now
Google continues to dominate the internet advertising when their advertisers are designing their internet advertising
industry; last quarter it reported a growth of over 1.4 billion campaigns, they can choose the type of website in which their
dollars. While this looks like a positive development, it may ads will appear.
not actually be a reflection of increasing online advertising
spending; Google has, in fact, reduced payouts to its network
of publishers. The question is, has Google successfully
maintained a comfortable margin of profit by decreasing their
payouts? In a period of three years, Google’s traffic acquisition
costs (i.e. what they pay their network of publishers – their
ad distribution channels) has been reduced from about 37%
to about 28%.

Of course, this may not at all be a forced reduction on

Google’s part. The ad revenues generated by parked domains
with Google-served ads may actually have decreased overall,
and this may have caused the decline in the amount of
Google’s payouts to its publishers.

Advertising budgets as of late may become more Spartan,

making advertisers even more concerned about click fraud:
automated scripts (that create so-called “zombie” computers)
are clicking on ads without their users’ consent, dissolving
some businesses’ PPC budgets without them ever receiving
a relevant customer. Unfortunately, it’s not unreasonable to
assume that there are also some unscrupulous domainers
involved in these activities.

Some domainers are also earning PPC revenues from typo

domain names, benefitting from traffic generated by visitors
who were looking for the original company in the first place.
For instance, someone who has a significantly similar domain
name to Amazon.com domain—maybe Amzon.com—could
gain type-in traffic from those who wanted to go to Amazon

16 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com


To be fair, advertisers were given leave to choose across
various subtypes and categories; the choice does not boil
down to ‘exclude parked domains’ or ‘do not exclude parked
domains.” Advertisers were given a variety of options; they
can choose to opt out of advertising through social networking
sites, social media sites and parked domains, among others.
As expected, advertisers began opting out of the sites that
did not bring in high ROI such as social networking sites.
However, a lot of them have also opted out of parked domains
advertising, even if the parked domains are sending in a lot
of converting traffic; such advertisers usually did so because
they think domainers are engaged in click fraud and other
unethical activities to generate this kind of traffic. It all boils
down to the advertisers’ perception of domainers.
This was a major blow to the domain name industry.
Domainers relied greatly on Google’s ads for profit and
PPC revenues. For instance, Sedo.com gets its advertiser
feed from Google. DomainSponsor is another domain
service that Google supplies with ads. When advertisers
opted out of parked domain advertising channel, the result
was a significant reduction in parked domains’ advertising
revenues. This is mainly due to the reduced advertising
spending on parked domain channels, but also due as well to
the reduction of advertising from high-paying advertisers and
crucial industries.
Google did not stop at giving advertisers the means to
control where their ads will be served or shown, however. In
July of 2008, rumors were flying high about Google’s planned
revamp of their domain parking program; this started with
Julia MacKenzie’s report that Google is starting to take a more
pro-active approach at solving allegations of click fraud from
domains. Google is also supposed to trim its distribution
down to only the channels that generated significant PPC
income for the company.
Feature: State of the Pay-Per-Click
Supposedly, Google would review all of the domains to
which they serve ad feeds. First, those which are not bringing
in enough converting traffic are going to be axed. Google will
no longer provide ad feeds to these parked domains. Next,
those domains which are deemed to be non-quality are also
going to be removed from Google’s parked domains’ database
and will no longer be provided ad feeds; non-quality domains
are what we generally consider to be lower-tier types of
domains and are thus unlikely to gain direct navigation traffic.
This proposed move by Google has raised a lot of issues
for domainers. What will happen to domains that could be
considered non-quality, but are still generating a lot of traffic
for Google’s advertisers? Some of them may have engaged
in active link building strategies and that may be their main
source of traffic. In other words, they may not be getting
much type-in traffic, but it doesn’t automatically mean
that they are coming by their huge traffic volumes through
illegitimate methods.
If Google implements this type of policy, many domainers
will suffer. Only a small percentage of parked domains are
deemed to be upper-tier domain names. If Google pushes
through with its plans to limit its ad feeds only to so-called
quality domain names, a significant number of domainers
will lose their parked domain revenues. More than 90% of
domainers in the domain parking industry will lose their most
reliable source of ad income.
Of course, there are undeniable benefits if Google were to
push through with this planned policy change. The advertisers’
confidence in domain parking may be restored and premium
domain name owners can look forward to growing spending
trends once more. However, this can also be detrimental to
those domainers who don’t rely much on type-in traffic, but
do get high legitimate traffic volume from other sources.
There have also been questions raised on the validity of
Google’s criteria for axing parked domains. In fact, Mackenzie,
in a follow-up report in August 2008, reported that the
domains that get a lot of converting traffic are actually typo
domains. This is hardly surprising. When people type in their
search terms on the URL bar instead of the search engine bar,
they usually know what company they are looking for. When
they commit typos – as pointed out above – they would be
brought to the typo domain names and will then click the ad
for the website that they wanted to reach in the first place.
Naturally, typo domains gain a lot of converting traffic.
Using Google’s criteria for ‘passing’ and ‘failing’ parked
domains, typo domains are bound to stay; they are, after
all, earning Google a lot of money. The thing is, letting typo
domains stay seems to defeat Google’s purpose of ‘cleaning
house’. How can Google raise the value of parked domain
channels if it is letting typo domains, the popular brands’
supposed e-nemesis, stay in its inventory of parked domains?
Another Google policy that is ruffling the feathers of a lot
of domainers is Google’s proposed policy that parked domains
now offer a related search tab in their parked domains. When
clicked, a list of organic search results will be displayed on
the parked domains. Obviously, if the users clicked on these
organic search results, the domainers are not going to get
paid; in other words, parked domains have simply become an
extension of Google SERPs.
Apparently Google is thus doing this to improve the Google
search experience for internet users, and by so doing, Google
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 17
Feature: State of the Pay-Per-Click
wants to retain its loyal search engine users. However,
domainers are adversely affected by this latest move from
Google. If users know that an organic search page is easily
accessible on parked domains, they can simply click on these
organic search results rather than on the text ads displayed
at the parked domains’ landing pages – and domainers will
not be paid for such clicks.
Advertisers, too, will realize that they may not have to
pay for PPC advertising anymore. An advertiser who wanted
type-in traffic had to advertise through parked domains; now
however, they no longer have to do the same thing. They can
simply optimize their pages websites for the search engines,
gain a top spot in Google SERPs and gain free type-in traffic
from the parked domains. Okay, so maybe SEO isn’t that
easy…but when you have an advertising budget allowing you
to buy copious amounts of traffic from Google, wouldn’t you
be more likely to go the SEO route and get the traffic for free?
On a positive note, these steps from Google might reverse
the general perception by the public that parked domains
are more annoying than helpful. As we all know, there is
an implicit conflict between parked domain owners and the
people who use the search engines. Specifically, these users
use the search engines or type in search terms directly
into their URL bars to find relevant and useful information.
As a result, Google is doing all it can to improve the user
experience for their search engines – and one of the ways
it seeks to accomplish this goal is to place restrictions on
parked domains.
Parked domains are just one of the ways by which Google
(and Yahoo, too) can distribute their content; they have a
big network of webmasters and publishers who operate fully
functional websites and these webmasters and publishers
are more than enough for the search engines’ advertising
distribution needs. Because Google and Yahoo rely on internet
users’ patronage for their ad earnings, it doesn’t really need
parked pages. Given a choice between domainers and search
engine users, the domainers will always take the back seat. In
fact, it has begun pulling out their Ask.com feeds off parked
domains starting last March.
Yahoo does the same thing: Yahoo is another ad
network that serves ads to major domain parking networks;
Parked.com is one of the major domain parking services
that serve ad feeds from Yahoo. In a move that had serious
effects against domainers, Yahoo disallowed PPC arbitrage in
February of this year.
PPC arbitrage refers to the strategy employed by online
affiliates, other publishers and, mostly, domainers for
increasing their PPC advertising revenues. In this kind of
scheme, the domainers signed up to receive Yahoo ads on
their parked domains. Typically, they use domains that are
related to key industries, usually those spending heavily in
online advertising. Then, they sign up for Google AdWords
of Microsoft’s corresponding program then bid for low-paying
keywords (i.e. keywords in non-competitive industries or
long-tail keywords that cost much less than one-word, generic
keywords). When their ads are clicked, they pay Google or
Microsoft the corresponding cost-per-click. The typical cost-
per-click on the keywords they bid for is usually only around
five cents, enough to make them back more money on the
traffic clicking through on their site.
Now, those who clicked on their ads would be brought
to the parked domains that are serving high-paying Yahoo-
served ads. When these visitors clicked on an ad on these
parked domains, the domainers earned money – the margin
between what they paid for the click at Google or Microsoft
and what they got paid for their visitors’ clicks on their parked
18 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
domains’ ads.
It’s kind of easy to see how arbitrage could give domainers
a bad name. Advertisers argued, that the traffic they got from
arbitraged domains was low-quality and untargeted traffic; it
was rather easy for some domainers to bid on keywords like
‘math problems’ and direct the traffic generated from such
obscure keywords to their parked domains that showcased
mortgage and credit card-related ads. Many visitors are likely
to click on any of the ads just to get out of the parked domains
they were currently in. Such clicks earned domainers money
and cost the advertisers to pay for non-converting (i.e.
uninterested and non-targeted) traffic; after all, visitors who
are searching for math problems in Google are obviously not
looking mortgage and credit card information.
As a result of the rising furor over domain arbitrage, Yahoo
finally decided to cut its losses and prohibited the action.
It was a late effort in Yahoo’s part to salvage its reputation
and gain more advertisers. Incidentally, it was also rumored
that the concern for advertisers is not Yahoo’s main reason
for clamping down hard on PPC arbitrage; apparently, Yahoo
cut off its nose to spite its face. It was, after all, earning
a lot of money from arbitraged domains. However, Google
and Microsoft were also earning money from PPC arbitrage,
obviously, as they are getting a lot of signups for their
keywords. That did not probably sit very well with Yahoo.
Caught in the middle were the domainers who relied
heavily on PPC arbitrage for their advertising revenues.
Some domainers earned 5-digit income from this method.
Yahoo has therefore killed one more ad-income avenue for
domainers.
PPC Alternatives on the Rise
The advertisers’ need to reduce advertising spending
can make them go for long-tail (2nd-tier and even 3rd tier
keywords), taking money away from the publishers who
have concentrated their keyword optimization strategies on
previously dominant industry keywords; this is a concern
that’s especially relevant to domainers who hold premium,
generic-keyword domain properties. For instance, if
advertisers were to go for “to sell your home”, those who
have concentrated their resources mainly on “mortgage”
and its obvious derivatives (e.g. mortgage rates) are going
to lose out heavily since the competition for such premium
keywords will go down and thus bid prices (and consequently
domainers’ payouts on ad clicks) will also go down.
The advertisers may also be getting wiser in how they
spend their advertising budget. Previously, the company
that owns Twitter has spent over half a million dollars on
PPC campaigns. As you probably know, Twitter is an online
social media platform that lets friends and their networks
update each other through short, SMS-like “tweets”; it’s like
Plurk without the bells and whistles. Now, this company has
diverted their online marketing budget to offline marketing
activities which have proven to be not only effective but also
very cost-efficient. They go around sponsoring community-
level events. At the price of the venue, food, drinks, and all
other understandable costs of sponsoring such social mixers,
the brand has continued to become stronger and its customer
base has continued to grow – at less the cost of the money it
used to pay for PPC advertising.
One other manifestation of the current “wise advertiser”
mode is the trend for cutting back on internet advertising and
concentrating on direct online selling. Some companies no
longer see much need for PPC because they can simply go
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Feature: State of the Pay-Per-Click
to a popular, high-traffic marketplace like eBay or Amazon
and sell their products directly to end consumers. Some
of these companies have even went so far as closing their
‘online stores’ or landing pages. They seem to think they
are no longer necessary. A company can simply list their
products on eBay, perhaps set up an online store with Auctiva
to complement their eBay selling activities, and they can
sell their products directly to online consumers. They don’t
need to promote their online stores through PPC; the traffic is
already there. The traffic at eBay and Amazon is considered
to be some of the best and highest-targeted (people who go
to these big online marketplaces are usually looking to buy
something). This realization on the advertisers’ part has taken
plenty of money out of the PPC industry, especially since a lot
of these advertisers were in highly competitive industries.
Do-it-yourself online marketing is also becoming a trend
with some advertisers. The advertisers, after years of
paying humongous amounts of money for PPC advertising,
have started to realize that they now have the information
they seek. Their PPC advertising has given them a lot of
information on their targeted and converted customers. Now,
they can simply offer their products and services directly to
consumers instead of going through PPC advertising to bring
in new customers. Email marketing is far cheaper than PPC
advertising – all it costs, basically, is the price of leasing or
buying a mail server and a good autoresponder.
The other strategies that former PPC advertisers are
employing include search engine optimization, building their
content base (and thus relevance in search engine queries),
starting their own blogs and forums to generate user-
generated content and increase the stickiness of their sites,
and sponsoring various contests.
The Consumers’ Reduced Spending
The economic crisis may not have reduced the number
of people online, but it has certainly reduced the number of
people who are buying and shopping online or the amount
of average consumer expenditure online. In fact, searches
20 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
using keywords for high-price items (through which we earn
considerably more per-click) have decreased; and there have
understandably been fewer searches for mortgage-related
keywords. There have also been fewer searches recorded for
consumer electronics.
Indeed, there are lower search volumes for moneymaking
terms and fewer buyers online, fewer people are buying. If
fewer people are buying, fewer people are clicking, and here
come the reductions in ad revenue. It doesn’t matter if a
lot more money is being spent online, and it doesn’t matter
that Google’s reported advertising profits this past quarter
has increased. Companies may be paying Google and other
ad networks for advertising and they may benefit from this
increased online advertising expenditure, but parked domain
PPC domainers are in the doghouse.
Perhaps as a result of this decreased online (and general)
spending, there is less demand for leads in key industries.
For instance, there is currently a relatively low demand for
mortgage leads. Even if there are more advertisers online,
our overall advertising revenues may still go down if we rely
on providing companies with high-paying leads. Also, the
companies which have already spent hundreds of thousand
in PPC advertising have probably collected enough leads at
this time to do initiate their own direct marketing campaigns;
they no longer need to pay for PPC advertising, at least until
the market information on those leads dries up.
This means that even as the number of advertisers online
is expected to increase, an advertising slowdown is still
occurring as a result of the current economic crisis. In the
short term at least, we will continue seeing this slowdown’s
effects. Our declining ad revenues may be one of its
manifestations. Even if long-term projections for the internet
advertising industry are good, we have to be ready to wait
out the current impasse.
So what’s the alternative?
Cut the middleman (i.e. Google and Yahoo) and sell ad
space and ad billboards directly to advertisers. Domainers
have a lot of power, especially those who have dominance
over key verticals. As long as you have enough inventory,
enough traffic, and enough relevance, you can probably sell
your space directly to advertisers. (Ideally, you’d be charging
them less than they’d spend on a PPC campaign to get the
same response.)
Ease up focus on PPC and start exploring other ad options
such as CPA. This is just a variation of the above proposed
solution; in this case, domainers will apply to become
independent affiliates for advertisers and will get a profit
share of revenues generated from referrals (i.e. percentage
commissions) or a fixed rate for every referral who performs
a desired action (e.g. signs up for membership, procures an
emailed newsletter subscription, buys something, inquires
through the telephone, etc.).
Domain leasing is another option. Instead of trying to
procure sponsorship for various ad spaces in our domains, we
can simply let companies lease our domains for their own
online marketing promotional activities or even as their own
business homepage. This way, we won’t have to rely on
fluctuating PPC earnings and changing online advertising
dynamics; we can expect a regular income every month from
every domain we manage to lease. Furthermore, if you make
domain development a condition of the lease, our domains
will also gain in page rank and traffic; in the end, too, the
company leasing our domains may be prevailed upon to buy
our domains at a very good price.
COVER FEATURE: 2008 - The Year in Review
2008 - The Year in Review
And what the last 12 months will mean for domainers in 2009
With the PPC slash-and-burn, The Snowe Bill, and ICANN’s plans to open up the TLD
extensions, 2008 has been exciting to say the least. There are unresolved issues and
concerns that the industry will face again in the coming year. Here are a few of the
headliners from 2008 and the effects they’ll have on the industry moving forward…
Domainers under attack
The interest of big corporations in the domaining industry
is a positive development. This can only mean more and
more of corporations acquiring domains and added domainers
finally flipping their domain properties for a decent amount
of money. Corporations have also brought a lot of money
into the domaining industry – either in sales or in investment
capital. These moves brought the domain name industry into
the mainstream of economic activity.
The increased attention from big business meant that the
industry, as a whole, has become subject to closer scrutiny
and inspection. Unfortunately, not all domainers are on the
straight and narrow. In fact, some rouge domainers – even
big players at that – have been accused of doing illegal or
unethical activities. Domain squatting, domain tasting and
domain front-running are only some of the activities that have
been brought to light. Corporations are also seeking justice
for trademark violations. Identity theft has often been linked
with domaining as some typo domains are used in phishing
activities.
Consequently, domaining has acquired a somewhat
negative image and all domainers are equally included.
Blanket measures that have been instituted for the purpose
of fighting trademark infringement affect not only criminals
but also the those of us who have done nothing wrong. This
is certainly not helping the domainers fight attacks that aim
to part them with their legitimate domain properties.
The U.S. government is currently on a crusade against
internet phishing. The intentions of Senator Olympia J. Snowe
and her supporters are good, so far as we can tell—after all,
we also want to stop phishing scams. However, the Snowe Bill
is more than just an anti-phishing bill: it proposes to demolish
whois privacy protection measures that are in place mainly
to protect domainers from spammers and scammers. Other
parts of the bill seem like another way for corporate America
(read: CADNA) to protect their trademark rights; it doesn’t
seem to matter to these trademark owners that a few of the
domains they claim to be violators are actually involved in a
different business (some of which had been registered before
the plaintiff’s trademark was approved). The bill also ignores
the international mechanisms already in place for domain
name disputes—which include claims of trademark violations.
This year there were stories of domainers being attacked
by various groups and business entities so that they could
attain possession of valuable domain properties. For instance,
Mr. Stephen Frayne, owner of Chicago2016.com is under
attack from the Chicago 2016 USOC (United States Olympic
Committee). USOC is the trademark owner of Chicago 2016
and the entity operating the Chicago2016.org site; however,
it must be noted that the trademark was filed after Frayne’s
own registration of the dot com version. A UDRP case is
currently filed against Frayne on this matter. He is also
under threat from Domain Trade, Inc. which is interested
in acquiring Tokyo2016.com – another domain name that
Frayne currently owns.
24 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
Owners of short and acronym-type domain names are
under siege as well. Xoft Inc. filed a case against Frank
Schilling for Xoft.com; BioDelivery Sciences International,
Inc, on the other hand, filed a case against HLK Enterprises
for BDSI.com; Anu Enterprises filed a case against
DomainRegistry.com for Anu.com. All these companies failed
in their attempts to get the aforementioned domain names.
In the case of Anu.com and Xoft.com, the domains had been
registered before the trademark rights were granted. In the
case of BDSI.com, there is no clear intent to violate the right
of the company filing the UDRP suit; after all, BDSI can stand
for many things.
Even local governments are joining the fray and trying to
wrest control over valuable domains from their registered
owners. A good example is the case that the state of Kentucky
has filed in the court of Thomas Wingate against the owners
of 141 gambling-related domain names. The reason given
for the suit is that the domains – which are associated with
internet gambling sites – are luring and letting the residents
of Kentucky gamble online. An unspoken reason may be that
internet gambling sites are taking gambling revenues away
from brick-and-mortar casinos and gambling operations.
The case, particularly the stated reasons for the seize-and-
hold decision given by Wingate, is absurd to say the least. The
domain names are supposed to become Kentucky’s property
because their residents—who are accused criminals under
Kentucky law—gamble online. The gambling sites aren’t based
in Kentucky, but according to the judge, the internet is not
above the law. While that may be so, there are limits to the
scope of decisions that municipal and regional governments
can make, especially when those decisions affect companies
and individuals outside local jurisdiction. As things stand,
Wingate remains firm in his decision to seize and forfeit the
domain names unless the domain name owners can prove
that the casinos on their domains have a program that will
automatically block anyone from Kentucky.
If this decision isn’t overturned, and decisively so,
wouldn’t it follow that a nation or state would be allowed
to claim forfeiture of any adult site simply because their
local government deems ALL pornographic material illegal?
Maybe there’s a better analogy that would hit closer to
home (especially for Wingate). Let’s say there’s a website
for a company in Kentucky that sells American flags, and it
inadvertently sells these flags to a sovereign territory where
American flags are illegal. Clearly Thomas Wingate is prepared
to offer this hypothetical territory the right not only to shut
down a company far outside their borders, but also to declare
the company’s intellectual property (the domain name) as the
true and rightful property of the offended territory. Obviously
this is an exaggerated analogy, but with any luck, arbiters of
a higher court will see the painfully obvious flaw in Wingate’s
logic.
On a positive note, domainers now have the Internet
Commerce Association. It is not sufficient protection on its

own, but it is doing a lot of good in protecting the interests of
both domainers and online companies. The ICA is our voice
and representative in matters that will affect all of us, and
that voice can only become stronger with more support and
involvement.
Lack of funding and capital
Domainers play a speculative game for the most part,
acquiring domain names in the hope that real businesses
and companies will want to buy our domain properties in the
future. Meanwhile, we need to pay for these domains’ annual
registration fees.
In actuality, $10 a year is not too much if you have
only a few domain names. It is an entirely different case,
however, if you have 3,000 domains; that’s $30,000 a year
on registration costs alone. Add to that the amount of money
that we have to shell out for domain hosting and we have
significant operational costs. Even if some of the domains are
earning ad revenues, they may not be enough to compensate
for our losses in those domains that do not earn their keep.
We also continue expanding our domain portfolios. The
more domain names we acquire, the bigger the chance that
we will find a domain name that can fetch a large sum. To
this end, we need to pay for domain name appraisals, the
going rate for domains in the secondary market and the
service fees for the aftermarket and domain dropping services
that we use. Basically, we have to spend a lot of money on
maintaining our existing domain properties and on acquiring
new domain properties.
COVER FEATURE: 2008 - The Year in Review
We need capital to remain in business if we’re to continue
our activities and last until we finally get that big sale we
are waiting for. If we give up early, all our years of waiting
and spending will be in vain, so we really need to finance
our maintenance and expansion activities meanwhile. We
just have to wait – that’s our adage. However, we need to
have some spending money or capital while we wait. This is
especially true if we have an extensive portfolio. Were we
to develop our domain holdings, we would need even more
money to do so.
The flow of investment capital into the domain name
industry has not been particularly robust. Nevertheless,
most of us have successfully procured funds to sustain our
activities. Those with big domain portfolios got financing
from venture capitalists and big business. Those with
smaller domain holdings managed to get approved for loans.
Everyone was optimistic about the future of the domain
industry especially as some lenders such as Domain Capital
even accepted domain names as loan collaterals.
Then the big subprime mortgage market began its collapse
in 2007. Suddenly, domain financing became harder to come
by. Fund managers became more conservative and more
reluctant to lend money to domainers who had no security
apart from domain names. The subprime mortgage market
collapse has made it a little more difficult for some of us to
remain in business.
The effect of the subprime mortgage market crash has
been felt mostly by the domaining-related or domaining-
associated companies that have gone public. At the start of
2008, the value of these companies’ stocks went down by
an average of 15% in a span of four months. It must be
said that not all public domain-related companies suffered
grave slides in stock prices. The heaviest losers included big
industry players, however, and the value of some companies’
stocks went down further than the average. For instance, the
value of Yahoo’s and Marchex’s stocks went down by 26 and
24 percent, respectively; Yahoo, as you know serve the ads
for Parked.com—a leading domain parking service. The value
of Tucows’s stocks, on the other hand, nosedived by more
than 30%.
The downturn was not over, however. By the early part
of the year’s third quarter, domain companies continued to
lose out heavily in the stock market. It did not help that
many were over leveraged and had loans and notes that
needed to be paid. Google, which has remained relatively
stable in the last quarter of 2007, started to decline in 2008;
by the second quarter, its stock prices were down by almost
25%. VeriSign’s stock prices have also decreased but only
by around 7%; this domain registry countered the economic
downturn by raising the domain name registration prices for
its TLDs. It was a different story for the Australian company,
Dark Blue Sea, which remained in trouble; its stock prices
dipped by over 60%. Tucows’ stock prices continued to
decline as well. Banks.com was one of the biggest losers; its
stocks plummeted by more than 80%!
There were a couple of positive developments, however,
which indicated that things might be starting to look up
for domain companies. Marchex, which has shown a slide
of more than 20 percent in the last quarter of 2007, has
recovered and its stock prices went back up by 20 percent.
Communicatel.com, on the other hand, showed a modest 10
percent increase in stock prices.
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 25
COVER FEATURE: 2008 - The Year in Review
The domaining industry, in general, did not suffer fatally
from the subprime mortgage market’s collapse. Note that
domain properties’ values remained relatively stable; the
domain-related public companies suffered because of the low
confidence of the public and investors in the stock market;
the slide in stock prices, therefore, was not specific to
domain companies. Furthermore, even if banks and financial
institutions were generally not willing or able to lend money
to domainers, financing options, which have been devised
specifically for domainers, remained available. In fact, in an
interview in February 2008, Robert Alfano of Domain Capital
assured domainers that funding remained available for
domaining activities and that there has been no increase in
interest rates due to the subprime mortgage market problem.
However, he did say that there has been an increase in loan
inquiries from domainers.
As long as there were companies like Domain Capital that
are willing to lend money to domainers, there was hope for
the domaining industry’s continued growth. VeriSign reported
an increase in domain registration activities this year; a few
domains were sold for more than a million dollars; many more
were sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seemed
that domaining remained profitable despite the subprime
mortgage market crash, with the exception of the heavily
affected, domain-related public companies.
Unfortunately the last half of this year brought more bad
news. The Lehman Brothers and other big businesses folded;
banks and financial institutions failed. For the domainers,
the same problem recurred. Fund managers were once again
reluctant to invest in domaining ventures; those who were
willing to fund domaining activities simply had no cash to
26 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
lend domainers. Prices of goods and commodities rose and
our activities had to take a back seat to more pressing needs.
Some domainers are trimming down their portfolios. By
so doing, they hope to be able to maintain their truly valuable
domain name properties and stay in the game until the big-
ticket sale finally occurs.
On a positive note, the current crisis and the resultant
lack of funds is making some domainers very happy. In the
current state of the industry, if you have money to spend
on acquiring new domains, you can probably pick up great
domain names for half of last year’s going rate. In other
words, if you have money to spend, you’ll love these new
developments; this goes for non-domainers and end users,
who can finally acquire great domains for a significantly
lower price. Thus, it is reasonable to expect more domain
turnovers during the remainder of this year and in the early
part of next year. This can be a good source of funds for our
cash-strapped industry.
The recent economic crisis may also lead people to desert
traditional asset accumulation strategies and start investing
in the domain name industry which is performing better and
appears to be more stable than the real estate market. The
domain sector has performed better in the stock market than
others as well.
When the economic crisis hit this October, the investors’
confidence in the stock market nose-dived once more. The
companies in the domaining sector or the companies which
are engaged in domain-related activities have been affected,
naturally, just as they had been when the subprime mortgage

market crash occurred last year. Nevertheless, the domain
sector is performing better than other sectors and the stock
prices for these companies have remained relatively stable.
After all, virtual assets like domains are unlike physical
assets (real estate), commodities (foodstuffs) and consumer
products (apparel and consumer electronics) in that domain
prices and related services (domain registration, hosting,
etc) aren’t really affected by volatile oil prices. Consequently,
there was no panic selling of domain-related stocks in the
market.
T
he domaining industry is indeed not as volatile as
other industries; as part of a still new and growing
brand of media, it is a better performer than the real
estate market and has remained stable in the stock market.
It is thus even more probable that more and more investors
will turn to the domain industry for investment opportunities.
If this happens, the domain name industry will recover much
faster and grow even bigger.
Of course, the fact remains that some people who may
have wanted to start investing in the domain industry may
no longer have money to invest; the stock market dip has
finished off a lot of people – most of them those who have
the right mindset for long-term investing. It must also be
noted that the reduction in domain prices – that which may
motivate some non-domainers or end users into buying
domain names – do not apply throughout the entire domain
industry. Different sectors are showing variable performance.
Furthermore, domain prices are determined differently;
domain prices in some sectors may have dropped because
of lower demand or they may have done so due to lower
valuations. Overall, these things mean that there may not be
as large a volume of domain sales as expected and indicated.
A wait-and-see trend may also apply today. Those who
have decided to invest their money in domaining (and thus
possibly fuel the growth and recovery of the domain industry)
may not do so immediately in the hope that current domain
prices – which are already considerably low in some sectors
– may go down even more. In this case, the actual rate of
domain sales may be lower than expected.
The crisis may also have another positive effect. The
economic downturn may lead to more and more companies
replacing their traditional media advertising strategies with
predominately online advertising. Aside from the fact that
domains have become more affordable, online advertising has
always been cheaper and much more efficient than traditional
media advertising.
Reduced Advertising Revenues
Perhaps due to the current economic crisis, fewer and
fewer companies are spending money on advertising. This
advertising slowdown has been particularly apparent in
traditional media – especially print media. The New York
Times, among other major media companies, have started
feeling the pinch. Radio and TV broadcasting companies
are not exempt and are experiencing the same advertising
expenditure slowdown. Does the internet advertising industry
– and thus the domaining industry – have the same problem?
Generally, internet advertising projections have been very
optimistic. It is supposed that the companies that are opting
out of traditional media advertising will, sooner or later, start
spending their advertising budget online. Ironically, the same
subprime mortgage market crisis that financed some of our
fellows’ domaining activities have actually resulted in an
increase of online advertising expenditures.
COVER FEATURE: 2008 - The Year in Review
A lot of the advertisers that flocked online were financial
institutions. They were probably hoping to rejuvenate the
whole financial sector through increased advertising. Since
internet advertising is, generally speaking, more affordable
than traditional media advertising and – if managed properly
– has higher (aside from more measurable) ROI, these
financial institutions opted to spend their advertising budget
online.
By the second quarter of this year, online advertising
prospects remained very good. Major internet advertising
companies projected a continued rise in online advertising
spending. It has been estimated that the internet advertising
industry will be worth more than 60 billion dollars in 2008
alone. Google performed very well from advertising; its
profits have increased by more than 25%.
Even so, it seems that we are getting a rather small share
of this projected advertising pie. Where is this advertising
expenditure going? We are certainly not seeing a lot of it.
In fact, if we base our evaluation of the internet advertising
industry on the domainers’ advertising income throughout
2008, we are probably going to get just a little bit panicky
about our industry’s current situation and our future prospects.
A lot of domainers have experienced a decline in ad
earnings. Some of those who used to earn around a thousand
dollars a day through PPC advertising are now seeing their
revenues reduced to two, three or a few hundred dollars a day.
In fact, the advertising revenues for the whole industry have
been reduced by around a quarter. Consequently, domainers
who were relying on their advertising income for domain
maintenance and domain acquisition found themselves with
no extra cash to spend on these activities. Now, more than
ever, they need funds from investors or loans from lenders.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, not many are investing money
in the domain name industry or lending money to domainers.
Maybe the internet advertising industry isn’t really
growing. Could this is the reason for our decline in advertising
revenues? Unfortunately, that is not the case. The internet
advertising industry is growing and future prospects remain
very good. However, the face of the online industry has
changed so that increased advertising spending no longer
means increased ad revenues for domainers. You have
probably realized by now that the advertising dollars that are
going online are no longer freely flowing into parked domains.
Click fraud is definitely one of the problems, and
advertisers are crying foul. Advertisers have a negative
perception of parked domains; they sometimes assume
parked domain pages practice click fraud. Some probably do,
but the same cannot be said for all domainers. Nevertheless,
due to the “company you keep” adage, all domainers have
been painted with the same brush, and this has affected all
of our advertising revenues. The search engines don’t want
advertisers to back out of lucrative advertising deals, and
they’ll turn against domainers if that’s what it takes to secure
these plum advertising contracts. They have started doing
this by offering advertisers the choice of the type of sites in
which they want their ads displayed.
Our ad revenues may also be decreasing due to the major
search engines’ current focus on ‘user experience’. In this
kind of setup, websites are deemed good if they have useful
content while domains that have nothing but links on them
are penalized through page rank reduction, among others. In
fact, many are developing their domain properties as a result.
It certainly doesn’t help that domainers are dependent on the
major search engines for their advertising income.
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 27
COVER FEATURE: 2008 - The Year in Review
Limited Ad Revenue Channels
There are countless ad networks online. However,
nearly all domainers rely on two major ad networks for
their advertising revenues: Google and Yahoo. Domainers
rely mostly on domain parking for their advertising income.
Domain parking companies, on the other hand, get most of
their ads and ad feeds from these two online search giants.
This, in itself, is not a bad thing. However, this does mean
that if one or both of these search engines suddenly change
their policies with regards to parked domains, most domainers
will suffer a decline in ad earnings. Some of you may have
already seen this happening; some domainers have reported
declining PPC ad revenues due to Google and Yahoo’s policy
changes. We can probably expect more punitive policies from
these search engines.
Domain companies in trouble
The economic crisis has negatively affected our advertising
revenues, although such effects are expected to be temporary.
It has also made funding rather difficult to obtain; thus,
some of our numbers have resorted to portfolio trimming.
While the overall prospects for the domain industry remain
good, overleveraged companies and those which have made
unwise decisions are now in hot water. They, too, need a
bailout (of some sort) or they’ll probably go belly-up – and
if they do, the repercussions will probably be felt across the
entire industry. For one, the domain name industry’s value
may be undermined and stock prices of domain companies
will probably follow suit. Domain prices may also come
plummeting down as well due to the buyers’ low valuation
of domain properties. If this happens, domainers who have
invested years in domain acquisition will have spent their
time waiting for the big sale that never happens.
Which companies are in trouble? Yahoo, as pointed out
above, is one of the biggest losers. Yahoo’s problems are
legendary. It has been having problems even before the
28 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
current crisis. If it doesn’t find a way of recovering, the
domaining industry will be in big trouble. As things stand,
Yahoo is already deep enough in hock that it is rumored to
be trimming down its operations and laying off an estimated
1,500 employees.
Of course, Yahoo is not really a domaining company;
however, it is one of the major ad networks that provide
advertising feeds to domain parking companies. If Yahoo
folds, where will we get ads for our domains? Sure, Google
can provide that service. However, as above mentioned, the
Google’s monopoly is not good for the domaining industry;
one policy change from this search engine will severely affect
our industry.
The dot mobi fiasco and even more TLDs: One of the
biggest fiascos that hit the industry this year is dot mobi’s
sudden rise to fame and its equally abrupt death. Aside from
the auction problems for which .mobi has become so popular
and the really big prices that were paid for ‘premium’ .mobi
names, a lot of .mobi domain names have also been taken
away from their registered owners by the big companies.
Intuit.mobi and Vonage.mobi are a couple of the domain
names that have been disputed on the grounds of trademark
rights. Nevertheless, when these two domains are accessed,
they do not really go anywhere. The same thing goes for a
lot of the disputed .mobi domain names. The advent of the
iPhone and the much easier alternative of creating mobile-
friendly pages have killed the .mobi TLD.
Finally, ICANN has approved a policy to expand the TLD
selection. TLDs will no longer be limited to .com, .net, .org,
.biz and the rest of the 21 gTLDs that currently exist. Soon
anyone who has enough capital can propose a TLD and
get it approved easily. On one hand, this opens up new
opportunities for domainers. On the other hand, the options
are rather limited for independent domainers; estimated
costs are very high. Furthermore, we have to wonder what
will become of the new domains and what this policy’s effect
is on the value of our domain holdings.
Feature: location, location, location!
Location, Location, Location!
Geodomaining isn’t a new concept, but it’s still a hot one.
Geodomain is the term used to denote a domain that
has a geographical counterpart; names that refer to cities,
states, regions or countries. Geodomains are most useful
when they’re developed into virtual representations of their
real-world counterparts. Palmsprings.com or Honolulu.com,
for example, are essentially tourism-focused domains, while
Madison.com tends to focus more on local content like the
real estate industry, the local businesses and the industries
in Madison.
In the early days of the domaining industry, geodomains
have been the subject of much debate and lawsuits.
Geodomainers and municipal governments like Myrtle Beach
and Barcelona have battled it out in court as to who has the
right to own the controversial geodomains. The municipal
governments claimed that their respective URLs should’ve
been a part of their trademark. However, the geodomainers
eventually won the case in court. Today, these issues are
resurfacing due to the recently approved Snowe bill.
After this turbulent period, the geodomaining industry
saw the entry of travel portals like Citysearch and Expedia,
city guides and media giants interested in staking a claim
in the internet local advertising field. Geodomains like
Cleveland.com, Las Vegas.com, Boston.com and Miami.com
were eventually bought and developed by the major local
newspapers. Still, a significant portion of the most valuable
geodomains ended up being owned by small entrepreneurs
who developed the domains into marketing and advertising
portals for local businesses.
Because of the intrinsic name-recognition value of
geodomains, the limited number of high-traffic geodomains
and the large amount of direct traffic geodomains generate,
geodomain value has been steadily increasing in the last
decade, especially for the pure .com geodomains. In fact,
latecomers to the market had no choice but to pay tens to
hundreds of thousands of dollars for premium geodomains
that are available in the aftermarket. Others, on the other
hand, contented themselves with purchasing and developing
geodomain derivatives such as Californiahomes.com or
NewYorkrealestate.com.
In time, geodomain owners formed their own industry
group, calling it Associated Cities. This group was created
to promote and market the geodomain sites to advertisers
and investors. It is composed of 110 members who have an
aggregate total of 7 million unique visitors every month. Five
years after its formation by Josh Metnick, owner of Chicago.
com and Skip Hoagland, Associated Cities was renamed
and became Associated Geos to make way for geodomain
owners of country and state dot com owners. As before, this
association only accepts pure .com geodomains.
As premium and pure geodomains got sold and resold
in the aftermarket, three major players soon came to own
most of the prized geodomains in the industry. One of these
is the Hilton Head, S.C. named Information Centers Inc
and owned by Skip Hoagland. This company owns around
600 geodomains spanning not just US geodomains like
Atlanta.com, MyrtleBeach.com, Atlanta.com and its most
recent purchase, Portland.com but geodomains of other
countries like Cuba.com. All of these sites follow a simple
template; each geodomain contains restaurant listings, hotel
30 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
accommodations and other services specific to the area.
Through the years, this strategy has proven to be a very
profitable one.
The second place in the geodomain sub-industry goes
to Boulevards New Media, which has accumulated over 90
significant city domains, 12 pure geodomains out of the
20 largest cities in the US and hundreds of geodomains of
lesser cities. Some notable geodomains of this group are
Dallas.com, Houston.com, SanFrancisco.com, SanJose.com
and Belfast.com. This company is currently headed by Dan
Pulcrano who also works as the publisher of Metro in San
Jose. Due to this publishing background that the company
head has, geodomains owned by this group sports more local
content that is updated on a regular basis. In other words,
they are not mere listings for local services; the domains
are linked with sites that offer content that visitors find
useful. Due to the extensive development of this company’s
geodomains, Boulevards New Media has some of the most
lucrative geodomains in the industry.
The third spot in the geodomain sub-industry goes to
Castello Cities Internet Network Inc. This company owns
more than a thousand geodomains scattered across different
countries. A few of the well known geodomains that this group
owns are PalmSprings.com, Acapulco.com and Nashville.com.
As with the Information Centers Inc, Castello Cities Internet
Network Inc focuses more on advertising rather than local
content. David Castello asserts that this strategy has actually
proven itself very profitable especially since their traffic is
primarily interested in promos and discounts, things to do
and places to go to rather than local content.
The sheer power of geodomains can be appreciated from
the fact that they bring in more than half a million dollars
yearly in gross hotel reservations alone. LasVegas.com, a
geodomain owned by Greenspun Media Group generates more
than $8 million dollars of revenues per year. Because of this,
some domainers have even begun to claim that geodomains
will eventually replace traditional media in local advertising.
This assertion stems from the following:
1. The operation and management of geodomains as
an advertising and marketing medium do not need a
heavy influx of capital. Thus, it can reach people at a lesser
cost than that which is required by traditional marketing and
advertising media. Owners of geodomains can market and
advertise products and services without having to spend
money on usual media items like paper, printing equipment,
property, and a big workforce. In fact, some successful
geodomainers claim that one person alone can manage a
large number of geodomains.
2. Owners of geodomains do not need to spend a lot of
money towards branding and attracting traffic. After
all, the domain name is composed of the name of the city
or location itself. In fact 60 to 80 percent of the visitors of
geodomain sites are type-in traffic or people who type the
geodomain name directly into their URL bars.
Due to the high revenues generated by geodomain
advertising, most geodomain sites tend to look a little
 Feature: location, location, location!

bit too cluttered with ads for local restaurants, hotels and
local businesses. In contrast to local media sites, these has become. Today, there are lots of different strategies
geodomain sites tend to have less local content such as local that newbie domainers can follow. Each domain strategy
news, weather reposts, obituaries, etc. They also tend to has its own set of tools that can help users decide on the
have less sophisticated features and applications such as RSS best domain name choices. Old timers in the domain market
feeds, mapping, fancy graphics, emails, etc. Nevertheless, sometimes diversify to take advantage of the growing trends
geodomainers claim that local products and services as in the industry as well as the new opportunities that have
well as special offers or discounts from local businesses are arisen.
what their site visitors want to find. For this reason, most
geodomain sites are focused on interesting things to do and Some domainers, for instance, like to speculate on the
places to go to. growth of new domain extensions like .mobi, .tv, .me, etc.
These domainers bank on the fact that as the internet expands
Geodomainers who maintain that they don’t have to and the dot com extension gets more and more saturated,
provide rich, local content actually have a point. According to some of these new extensions will gain the same popularity
a survey done by Borell Associates (an interactive marketing as the original domain extension. Some domainers, on the
research firm), more than two years ago, most of the other hand, invest on ccTLDs (country-code top level domains)
independent city sites surveyed showed a drastic increase knowing that as the internet permeates these countries,
of 100 to 300% in ad sales between the years 2004-2005. country specific searches will soon be a substantial factor in
Although simple geodomains still lag perceptively behind evaluating the value of domains. Still, some domainers spend
local media sites when it comes to the overall percentage most of their money on generic domains. These domainers
of advertising dollars they attract, (1% for geodomains as concentrate on product and service generics to drive type-
compared to 18% for newspaper websites and 3% for local in traffic to their site and earn on advertising or parking. If
TV and radio sites), geodomainers are rapidly catching up. domainers have all these options, why go geo?
In fact, in the battle between Castello Group’s PalmSprings.
com and the daily paper of PalmSpring, The Desert Sun, the Targeted Traffic = Higher Conversion Rates
city site far outranked the local media site in terms of the
advertising dollars attracted. The local media site is now First and foremost, as with generic domains, geodomains
drive in targeted traffic. After all, most of the people who
trying to play catch-up by introducing a visitor’s guide to Palm
Spring in their site. Moreover, according to a research done type in geodomains (say people typing in Miami.com into their
by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm, internet URL bar) are people who are interested in finding a product,
advertising can overtake all forms of media by the year 2011. a service or information local to the city (in the example,
local to the city of Miami). Some visitors may be looking

3. Although the domain industry is still relatively young, for a cheap hotel room in the city. Some may be looking for
the different niches that have sprung up during the real estate properties that are for sale or properties that may
past few years give testimony to how diverse the industry be worth investing in. Some may also be planning to visit

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 31

Feature: location, location, location!
the city and are thus looking for local tourist attractions and
info on the city’s nightlife. Regardless of what the visitor is
searching for, you can be sure that the name of the city will be
foremost in their minds when they start their search.
Locals help too. People residing in the city itself are part of
the walk-in traffic (or type-in traffic, rather) of geodomains.
People who are looking for a product or a service that can
be obtained locally might go to a relevant local geodomain
rather than try searching for products and services offered by
national or international companies. For instance, if one is
looking for furniture, he or she is unlikely to go to eBay. It’s
much more economical and practical to find a local service
through the local geodomain.
Other types of services that may interest locals to
geodomains are local part time or full time jobs, local cleaning
services, babysitters, car dealers, shops, online grocery
stores, etc. In fact, local searches have been steadily gaining
in popularity as more and more people are turning to the
internet for their local needs. In fact, studies show that locals
spend about 80% of their money within a 20 mile radius from
their homes. Couple this with the fact that gas prices are
soaring while e-commerce is fast gaining popularity, and
you will see why geodomain’s advertising share has been
increasing for the past few years.
Since geodomains gain highly targeted traffic, local
businesses advertised in such domains will experience higher
conversion rates. This gives geodomain owners more leverage
for attracting more advertisers to their sites. Geodomains
are also direct competition to local magazines, newspapers,
classified ads, yellow pages, and other local marketing and
advertising media. Geodomains, aside from providing highly
targeted local traffic, are almost always a lot cheaper than
these other mainstream advertising media. Additionally, ads
served through geodomains have a longer shelf life than the
local daily paper or even the local magazines.
Easy to Remember = Easily Brandable
Creating a brand is expensive. In fact, the whole process,
which spans choosing the right name, choosing the right
medium in which to advertise this name and becoming a
credible player in the market, is not only one of the biggest
expenditures in most businesses; it is one of the most time
consuming as well.
Geodomains are a different story. If you have a geodomain,
it will seem like you have bought an instant brand, one that is
instantly recognizable, can be easily remembered and, most
of all, is instantly credible to the market. Think about it; would
the average internet user question the credibility of Atlanta.
com? With geodomains, you can spend the minimum needed
for branding and yet find your traffic rate more substantial
than non geo-specific domains.
Type-in Traffic
The best thing about geodomains is the built-in type-in
traffic that they have. Without doing anything more than
activating the domain, geodomain owners have found out that
traffic immediately starts flowing into the domain through
direct navigation. It’s like acquiring a store in a high-traffic
location; suddenly, people who are passing by the area start
coming in even if the store is new and doesn’t have much to
offer its target customers yet.
As mentioned before, more than half of all the people that
end up in geodomains type in their search queries directly
32 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
into their browsers instead of doing so on search engines.
Lowell.com for example gets 57% of its traffic through direct
navigation.
This means that geodomainers can immediately start
earning money off their investment even with the most
minimal set-up. They can even do nothing more than park
their domains be assured of a few hits. Lowell.com, for
instance, earns $2-3 daily on AdSense revenues alone and
more from revenues derived from business referrals and such.
Less competition for Local Advertisers
Local business advertising is recognized as one of the
untapped niches in the domaining industry. Most domain
strategies involve competing for national or international
advertisers and businesses. In result, profit gets diluted.
Even generic domains have to compete with thousands of
other sites when it comes to its search engine rankings.
Through geodomains, you can be sure that you are investing
into a relatively untapped niche market – and a medium
share of the local advertising market can be, more often than
not, a lot more profitable than a miniscule percentage of the
national and international advertising market.
Since local businesses are usually newbies at the online
advertising and marketing game, you may also find it easier
to close the deal with them and to retain customer loyalty than
if you have to deal with national or international brands that
have extensive knowledge of and experience in advertising
as well as a lot more advertising offers to choose from. Local
businesses also gain smaller returns for their advertising
dollars and are thus more willing to deal with someone who
can offer targeted traffic for a smaller fee.
More Flexibility
With geodomains, you have the option of choosing
whether or not to put up a service-oriented or information-
oriented site. As proven by two of the three most successful
groups in the geodomaining market, you can earn a healthy
profit without investing heavily on content, aesthetics, savvy
programming, or complicated scripts. By just having the right
mix of local advertisements in your geodomain – say, the
lowest hotel rates in the area, the best car rental companies,
etc – you can serve the needs of most of the visitors that will
find your site.
Less Speculation
A lot has been said about the level of speculation inevitable
in trying to asses the value of domain names. More often
than not, domainers buy domain properties based only on a
rather vague idea about how much the domain name is worth
or on how much they can get for it when the domain is resold.
With geodomains, a lot of information is at the domainer’s
fingertips to help them asses the value of the geodomains they
are planning to buy or sell. Some of these variables are the
city’s industries and industrial potential, population, median
income bracket, ethnic demographics, age demographics, and
many more. Such information is abundantly available and
can be easily integrated into the analysis of a geodomain’s
value.
Geodomainers, especially those who have premium
geodomains, are usually among the first to advise others
about the wisdom of holding on to geodomains. They know
that their geodomains are going to be worth a lot more in the
future; they also know that with continuous development,
such geodomains will become a source of considerable
income in the long-term.
High SEO Rankings
Since relevant keywords and content are a natural part
in the development of a geodomain, geodomains are some
of the few domain properties that have natural high search
engine rankings. After all, what else can be placed on a
Chicago.com site but ads for restaurants in Chicago, ads for
hotels in Chicago, content on Chicago tourist destinations,
and tons of other content specific to the city of Chicago?
Plenty of Verticals
Geodomains, especially pure geodomains, has great
potential when it comes to vertical marketing. It has the
capacity to attract an unlimited number of advertisers local to
the particular area such as restaurants, movie theatres, golf
courses, hotels, classifieds, arts, real estate, and many more.
Unlike generic domains that cater to specific product lines or
services, geodomains have a lot more untapped potential.
Evaluating Geodomains
As in any other business, you just can’t go around buying
up geodomains or geodomain variations without a strategic
plan in mind. In fact, most geodomainers recommend that
newbies concentrate on a few great geodomains and develop
them rather than collect a lot of geodomain variations that
34 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
will end up undeveloped.
There are different approaches to evaluating geodomains.
Some approaches are for investors who are ready to invest a
large amount of capital into the venture. Most, however, are
for the regular investors who are looking for a cheap way to
break into the geodomaining industry. There is no standard
valuation method for geodomains, although there are people
and businesses that may offer these appraisal services for a
fee.
One can get an idea about how much geodomains are
worth by studying the supply and demand variables of these
geodomains in the domain market and the aftermarket and
by keeping track of the historical sales values of specific
geodomains.
Stick with the .com
As always pure geodomains with .com extensions are
the most highly valued geodomains in the market. Pure
geodomains are those geodomains that have the exact name
of large commercial cities, states in the US or top countries in
the world like Atlanta.com, NewYork.com, London.com, etc.
These geodomains have values that range from hundreds
of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars. As previously
mentioned, LasVegas.com is one of the most valued
geodomains. It is said to be worth more than $12 million
dollars and it has annual revenue greater than $8 million.

Location + Industry Type Geodomain
Geodomain variations that involve pairing a location
with an industry popular in that location are also high-
potential domains. An example of this is Austinhomes.com
or Austinrealestate.com. People looking for properties to
buy in Austin will immediately gravitate to these domains.
They are, after all, specifically about real estate in Austin.
Moreover, Austin’s local real estate businesses and realtors
will also gravitate to such sites as they offer potentially
highly-targeted leads.
Location plus industry type geodomains can therefore be
very profitable if the domainer who owns them knows how to
pick the best mix of location and industry.
Location + Activities Type Geodomains
Geodomain variations that integrate the location name
and activities that are popular in that location are also more
often than not great geodomains. This type of geodomains
can be used effectively for tourism-heavy areas such as the
Bahamas, Las Vegas, Hawaii, etc. Some examples of this
type of geodomains are celticseakayaking.com, costa-rica-
surfing.com and oregonhiking.com.
While this method may bring in less type-in traffic, it
does however bring in visitors looking for specific vacation
activities in a specific location. In location+surfing.com types
of geodomains, for example, you can look for advertisers from
among the popular surfing beaches in the area as well as
surfing gear sales or rental shops, etc. Of course, investors
still have to investigate the popularity of such activities in that
location as well as the number of local businesses catering to
that activity.
Location + Keywords
Taking the geodomain variation strategy one step
further, investors could pair up the location name to any
keyword that can bring about a significant amount of
traffic. Some examples? How about SanFranciscoBars.
com, SeattleCoffeeHouses.com, Switzerlandchocolates.com,
VirginiaColleges.com, and Orangecountylaundry.com? You
can also use the combination of Location + family beaches,
Location + health retreats, Location + music cities, Location
+ Festivals, and so on and so forth.
The different variations as well as the opportunities are
almost unlimited. Of course, it is still up to the geodomainer
to determine which niches are the most profitable ones as
well as which ones can bring in the most traffic. A Location +
boats keyword geodomain that centers on a landlocked city,
for example, is a surefire strategy for failure.
Developed non .com Geodomains
Non .com geodomains also have their potential in the
geodomain field. Take a look around the internet and you
will see a lot of non .com sites that have found their way into
the mainstream. Some examples of this are: craiglist.net,
wikipedia.org, etc. After all, domain development also plays
a great part in the profitability of domain investments. Thus,
developed domains that have a loyal following among internet
users can increase their advertising value substantially and
demand a high resale value.
Feature: location, location, location!
General Statistics
The general statistics of a certain location will also play a
great part when evaluating geodomain names. A city of more
than a million inhabitants will fetch a higher price than a city
of 50,000 residents. Likewise, a city that attracts more than
100,000 tourists every year will also fetch a higher price than
one that attracts less than 2,000.
Other general statistics that will influence the price of a
geodomain are the types of industries and businesses located
in the area, the primary language, the median income of the
population, a classification of the location as a US state, job
opportunities, etc.
Specific Statistics and Trends
Specific statistics and trends will also sometimes play
an important role in gauging the value of geodomains.
The recent awareness of global warning and pollution, for
example, has driven the people to look for other cities to live
in. This may affect the value of the location’s geodomain
counterparts. Some specific statistics that may be important
when using this strategy are home prices, cities with the
highest paying jobs, cities with the most number of singles,
cities with clean air, cities with good health care access, cities
of specific cultural/ethnic demographics, cities least affected
by global warming, etc.
Recently, CNN money labeled Middleton, Wisconsin as the
best place to live in America. As a geodomainer, you must
be able to connect the dots and predict that the geodomain
middleton.com is going to receive a lot of visitors in the next
years to come as more and more people check out the city
that got the number 1 spot in livability.
Here’s the complete list of the top 10 (to live in) places in
the US:
1. Middleton, Wisconsin
2. Hanover, New Hampshire
3. Louisville, Colorado
4. Lake Mary, Florida
5. Claremont, California
6. Papillion, Nebraska
7. Milton, Massachusetts
8. Chaska, Minnesota
9. Nether Providence, Pennsylvania
10. Suwanee, Georgia
Type in Traffic
According to David Castello, owner of one of the most
successful geodomain companies, type in traffic is perhaps
the most important factor in determining the value of a
geodomain. Local population may contribute to the value
of the geodomain, but the popularity of the location that the
geodomain represents is infinitely more important than all
the preceding factors. As an example, he cited one of his
geodomains, PalmSprings.com, which has a local population
of only 47,000. Despite this relatively small population size,
however, this remains to be a profitable geodomain. Castello
maintains that most of the value that this geodomain has
is derived from the popularity of Palm Springs as a tourist
destination; this accounts for the large number of type-in
visitors to this domain.
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 35
Feature: location, location, location!
Online Geodomaining Tools
Of course, becoming a full fledged geodomainer will be
a lot easier if you utilize some of the basic tools that can be
found online. These tools will not only help you choose highly
profitable geodomains but also help you determine the value
of your geodomains.
1. Google Keyword Tool: This tool will show you the
number of people who have searched for a particular keyword
or keyword phrase. The Google keyword tool will also show
you how stiff the competition is for the keyword or keyword
phrase you have queried.
2. Domain Name Analyzer: A free bulk WhoIs tool that is
private and free.
3. Domain Research Tool: This may be a bit expensive,
but it offers the best set of tools for domainers. Some of its
functions are bulk scanning, proxy support, typo generator,
portfolio manager, daily updated domain lists, and many
others.
4. NameBio.com: This tool will give you figures on how
much a particular domain fetched in a previous sale. It will
also give you information on domain sales comparisons, sales
history, domain auction results, etc.
5. City Data: a great tool for geodomainers, this tool
provides city population information on most of the US cities,
racial diversity, household income, major industries, tourism
figures, etc.
Developing Geodomains
Extensive planning is needed to succeed in the geodomain
business. Online forums and blogs from geodomainers who
have “been there’ and “done that” are great resources; they
will teach you the “ins and outs” of, the strategies and pitfalls
of geodomaining. A great blog in this case is simplygeo.com.
It has tons of information and tips on geodomaining including
tips on evaluating geodomains, strategies for developing
geodomains, and up-to-date news articles that the newbie
geodomainer will find extremely useful.
Successful geodomainers generally encourage newbies
in the market to develop their newly acquired geodomains
to maximize their potential for the simple reason that most
geodomains lag behind in the PPC department as compared to
generic domains. As such, some development will be needed
to attract and build domain traffic. An important step in this
development stage is figuring out how your target visitors
think and what they want to see in your geodomain pages. Is
it local content, tourism ads, business-related-ads, etc?
Including local content in the development plan of
geodomains has the potential of exponentially increasing
the amount of traffic that such geodomains attract. Locals
are naturally interested in their city or country. By having
local content in your site, you can encourage these people to
participate in your blog, link their sites to yours, refer your
domain to other people and generally increase the popularity
of, ranking of and traffic to your domain. By making your
geodomains interactive and interesting – say, by posting
36 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
videos, hosting forums, creating blogs, creating photo
galleries, etc. – you will also encourage people to return to
your geodomains to check for any updates. A developed
geodomain will, in time, find that the number of visitors from
search engines and links will outdistance the number of type
in visitors.
Of course, an important part of developing geodomains
is attracting advertisers who will pay to get ad space on
your geodomains. To this end, you need to educate your
target market. Conduct regular seminars that will teach
your potential customers the value of advertising through
geodomains, and you will find that this will help you a lot in
gaining advertisers for your site. Direct advertising is also
essential and your domain’s information regarding targeted
traffic as well the performance of the other advertisers in your
site will be crucial if you want to convince new advertisers
to sign advertising contracts with you. Client testimonials,
well planned face-to-face presentations, continuous traffic
building and a great sales attitude are important factors for
determining whether your geodomain will be a success or
not. At some point, your services will spread by word of
mouth and things will become a lot easier from that point
forward.
Geodomains are essentially a lot more demanding than
generic domains. To fully realize the potential of your
geodomain investment, you must be ready to pound the
pavement, shake many hands, make countless presentations,
spend money to advertise on traditional media, and generally
do most things that a brick-and-mortar entrepreneur has to
do.
Nevertheless, some geodomainers are finding more creative
ways to profit from their domains. Some are partnering up
with the local media or other companies and splitting their
profits 50/50. Some are also leasing their geodomains out
on a long-term basis, while others are employing local sales
people that will market their geodomains to local businesses.
Geodomains Forecasts
Geodomainers are gearing up this year and preparing for
the next level. Most geodomainers have high hopes that this
year will bring about the supremacy of the geodomain niche in
the industry. In fact, the geodomainers who are finally taking
the time to add content to their geodomains are growing.
Dot com, tourism-centered geodomains are also
expected to grow faster than non-tourism centered premium
geodomains. Premium geodomains are predicted to develop
mobile versions of their sites as more and more users log
on to the internet using their mobile phones and handheld
gadgets.
With the rising recognition of geodomains as direct
competitors of local traditional media such as newspapers,
magazines, TV stations, and radio stations, more and more
of these companies are expected to align themselves with
geodomain owners. It is expected that increasing advertising
funds will be diverted from traditional media and channeled
into the geodomaining sub-industry.
Indeed, as the internet moves from “global” to “local,”
geodomains stand to gain a lot in the very near future.
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 37
 Feature: Taking the “Lead”
Taking the “Lead”
The advantages of the Cost-Per-Lead Platform
Pay-per-click or PPC has always been the preferred
advertising monetization scheme for domainers. This is
mainly due to the fact that domain parking services usually
get their ad feeds from Google and Yahoo, both of which
provide mainly PPC schemes to domain advertising channels.
PPC has also served the domainers well for years. Domain
parking is effortless, does not need any capital and assures
the domainers of a residual income while they wait for
someone to make the right offer for their domain properties.
Unfortunately, by relying on domain parking for your
domain revenues, domainers have made themselves
vulnerable to the whims of the search engines. Search
engines are now not as accommodating to domainers as
they have been. Domainers are still important to Google and
Yahoo (in 2005, it was reported that one percent of Yahoo’s
revenues came from Frank Schilling’s domains), but they’re
still not as important as the advertisers themselves. In the
end, the advertisers are the rule-makers and some of them
are not very happy with domain-referred traffic. Google has
already bowed to the pressure by giving their advertisers
the ability to opt out of domain advertising; Yahoo, too, has
put a stop to one of the most lucrative domain monetization
models: PPC arbitrage.
As a result of these and all other developments this year
and late 2007, domain parking revenues are going down even
as internet advertising expenditure is going up and is predicted
to rise even more in the coming years. Of course, this may
be partially attributed to the economic crisis. Internet users
are not in the buying mood lately, for instance. Whatever
the reason, domain parking—and PPC, its ad monetization
model—is no longer as lucrative as it once was. Should
domainers wait for a recuperation of the PPC scheme? Maybe,
but the average domainer should still explore other domain
monetization options. Some say PPC is dead as the dodo, and
if that’s true, do any of us really want to be buried with it?
The Pay-per-Lead Monetization Platform
Pay-per-lead or PPL (also known as Cost-per-Lead) is one
option. Instead of being paid for clicks, you are paid for every
lead you generate for your advertisers.
The Basis of Lead Generation:
Lead generation is a common practice among businesses.
Companies are looking for future customers, and to do this they
generate information about consumers who are interested in
their products and services. They use this information to
directly market their brand to these consumers. The final
goal is still sales, but companies who do lead-gen are more
concerned with ultimate conversion rather than immediate
conversion.
Why would companies pay for leads? Demographic info
on possible customers: how old they are, where they live,
what kind of work they do, how much money they earn; their
marital status, how many children they have, their interests,
their problems, etc. Of course, not all of this information is
answered immediately. Companies may initially have just
a prospective customers’ name and email address, but it
doesn’t stop there.
38 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
Lead generation is typically part of long-term customer
acquisition programs. There are products that require careful
deliberation before they are purchased; these typically
include high-priced products like a plasma TV and expensive
(non-basic-need) services like financial advising.
Through lead generation and the customer cultivation
that it makes possible, business managers can create a
relationship with customers, educate them about their
options, answer their questions, and address their concerns;
thus the prospects learn and become more confident about
buying and service-acquisition decisions. The companies also
benefit from the lead cultivation process; through it they
are able to get the information that they need to identify
their target market, assess the purchasing power of the lead,
and design targeted (and thus more effective) offers. The
companies, by educating their leads, also become ‘known’ to
their prospective customers; pairing this branding knowledge
with personalized offers mean the companies can become
more successful in selling their products and services. There’s
also a possibility that their leads could become some of their
best ‘advertisers’; if they’re satisfied with the company
they’re doing business with, they are much more likely to
send their friends and other members of their social network.
Not all companies treat their leads the same way. Some
still skip the ‘leading up to sales’ phase and jump in with an
immediate sales offer. This can be effective if the prospect
is already motivated to buy or try a product/service; but
this type of marketing and selling to leads is often less
effective than the initially subtle approach discussed above.
In any case, leads are valuable to businesses have long-
term acquisition goals and value customer loyalty (and thus
recurring business) more than immediate (and perhaps) one-
time sales.
Online Lead Generation:
Internet advertising has evolved to become a more
efficient alternative to traditional media advertising. Cost-
per-mille (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC) platforms are the
popular internet advertising schemes. CPM came first with
online billboard-type ads. CPC came next, and advertisers
flocked to the new model because the results of their
advertising were immediately measurable with click-through
rates; they had to pay for clicks as opposed to impressions
or ‘views’. Cost-per-action (CPA) is the online equivalent
of commission- or performance-based marketing programs
offline. The source of the lead – the webmasters, publishers
and domainers – are only paid if their referrals have done a
specifically targeted action.
CPA has offline roots. Think of sales agents, mortgage
brokers, etc. who got a commission when they sold something
for a company with which they were working. There have
also long been lead-generation companies that mined
consumer information through various means and sold them
to companies that might be interested.
Since the advent of internet advertising, these types of
performance-based marketing were modified to suit the web,
and more and more companies started seeing the potential
of online sales and lead generation. As the costs of CPC
increased, moreover, companies that have long been doing
online advertising started shifting over to performance-based

advertising platforms. The report by IAB on online advertising
spending revealed that half of the internet advertising
programs in the 2nd quarter of year 2007 were based on CPA
models. A study by GP Bullhound Research also indicated that
the online lead generation market is growing at a much faster
rate than the internet advertising industry overall, showing
an impressive growth rate of over 70 percent year-over-year.
Affiliate marketing, also known as cost-per-sale or CPC,
belongs to the CPA platform. In affiliate marketing, the
affiliates are paid a commission—either fixed or a percentage
share of the revenues from the referral—for every sale. Cost-
per-lead programs also belong to the CPA platform. Unlike
affiliate marketing, however, the affiliates are paid per lead
generated for the advertiser. The affiliate’s referrals, in this
case, don’t have to buy anything; they only have to fill out
a form.
Companies can buy leads from online lead aggregators.
These are companies that use various methods online (they
can use software for this) to mine information about internet
users. Leads can also be bought through CPL networks; the
members – still generally known as affiliates – usually have
websites in which qualified leads are pulled for advertisers.
This latter type of lead generation is where your opportunity
lies; you’ll use your domains to pull in leads for advertisers and
you’ll be paid for every lead you generate for the advertisers.
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Feature: Taking the “Lead”
You can generate two types of leads. There are those that
land on your domain by querying a keyword through a search
engine or by directly typing their keywords into the URL bar.
These organic leads are of higher quality and thus of more
value to advertisers because they are looking for the products
and services that the advertisers are offering.
You can also actively market incentive-based programs –
where members can avail of special discounts or win/get free
items by submitting the forms that your advertisers provide.
In this case, though, the leads are driven not by a need to
know more about the products or services offered by your
advertisers but by a desire to get whatever incentive you are
offering them for signing up. Thus, you are likely to get a high
rate of conversion in incentive-driven lead generation; the
rate of sign-ups is likely to be inflated by those who merely
want to get your incentives even if they aren’t interested in
the products or services offered by your advertisers.
On the advertisers’ side, however, the ultimate rate of
conversion for this type of leads is lower than the search/
organic type of leads; the incentive-driven leads generally
need more convincing if they are to become your advertisers’
customers in the future. Of course, incentive-driven leads
can still be high-quality leads if the incentives you offer are
aligned with the products and services that your advertisers
are offering; if an advertiser is offering domain registration
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 Feature: Taking the “Lead”
services, you can improve the quality of leads you send this
registrar by offering a discount coupon for the registration
services that they can use anytime they decide to use of your
advertiser’s registration service. In this case, your leads are
obviously interested in domain registration; otherwise, they
won’t care about the discount coupons you are giving away.
In either type of lead generation, the “leads” you refer to
the advertisers may have to do different things, depending
upon the specific goals of such advertisers. Your leads may
be required to subscribe to a free newsletter or to request
a free product sample. They may be asked to download a
research paper, software or widgets. They may be asked to
register for membership or to answer surveys and quick polls.
They may also be required to sign up for a free webinar or
seminar. These are the most common “lead-type” actions
that may be required of your referrals. In many cases, your
leads are probably going to be required fill out a form or
a questionnaire asking them for their personal details and
contact information. Such information can be as basic as
a request for the lead’s name and email to something more
detailed. In other cases, however, they may be asked for their
credit card numbers so that the advertiser can be assured
that they are who they say they are. In some cases, the
definition of a completed lead can be much more complex;
leads may be required to fill out multi-page forms as is true
when the leads are required to answer surveys.
Lead generation is implemented in various ways. In some
cases, you – the publisher or domain owner – need to provide
the forms that need to be filled out and the advertisers will
simply buy some or all information for every qualified lead
that you have collected. However, as is most often the
case, clicking on a lead-gen ad will bring the leads to the
advertisers’ page where they will be given the advertisers’
standard lead-gen form. If your referred leads fill out the
forms completely, you will be paid for that referral.
The easiest method of generating PPL income is by signing
40 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
up with a PPL ad network or an affiliate ad network that
provides PPL deals.
Advantages:
The majority of those who decide where their (or their
clients’) internet advertising budget should go have stated in
a study that they recognize CPL programs as a distinct area
of internet advertising. Thus, we can expect more internet
advertising money to flow to CPL/PPL advertising models.
This is borne out by the findings by IAB in 2007 that the
internet advertising share of performance-based advertising
models such as CPL is increasing whereas the market share of
other platforms are decreasing. CPL advertising is on the rise
and you can hitch your star on it and rise with it, or you can
ignore the trend and sink with PPC. It’s your call.
PPL also has distinct advantages over other online
advertising models. Conversion rates for PPL models are
typically higher than conversion rates for PPC/CPC models.
It’s much easier to convince internet users to fill out a form to
get a free item that you (in an incentive-type lead generation
program) or the advertisers are offering than to convince
them of buying something from your advertisers. Since there
is no need to buy anything, your consumers are more willing
to take part in your lead generation activities and sign up
for the forms provided by your advertisers. There’s also the
lure of a free product or free service from your advertisers:
they want to receive industry newsletters or technology white
papers so they will sign up for your lead-generation programs.
If you have a huge volume of traffic to your site, your total
PPL revenues can be considerable. One PPL program can pay
you $1.50 per lead you send to the advertiser; if you are able
to send 1,000 leads a day to that advertiser, you will earn
$1500 from that PPL program. Of course, if you are part of
more than one PPL program, have a more than 1,000 visitors

converting daily or are given a much higher rate per lead,
you’re going to earn much more from lead generation. For
instance, technology-related programs can pay as much as
$120 per quality lead; if you convert only 50 customers daily
(i.e. if you are able to convince 50 of your visitors daily to sign
up for a program) then you will earn around $6,000 on that
single program alone.
In cost-per-sale or pay-per-sale methods, you also run the
risk of a referred customer (for which you have been paid a
commission) reversing a charge or purchase. In this case, the
advertiser may also reverse your commission. Furthermore,
if you are advertising high-priced products and services,
you’ll probably have an even lower rate of conversion than
if you offer PPL programs for the same high-priced products
and services.
Even if you are paid only $0.50 per lead, you are likely
to earn more money from PPL programs than AdSense.
Although your customers are required to do more than just
click on an ad unit so you can earn from leads, you (or your
advertiser) do offer something in return for their cooperation
so there’s still a good chance that your customers will fill out
the forms required.
Lead generation can also be a source of recurring income if
you have return traffic to your site. One customer who relies
on your site for freebies and other incentives (either from
you or from the advertisers themselves) can actually come
back every time they want a new offer. One day they may
sign up for one program; the next time they return, they can
Feature: Taking the “Lead”
sign up for another program on your site. Furthermore, if
your lead generation program does not only offer to pay only
for leads but also reward affiliates for leads that ultimately
convert (sort of like a PPL-PPC combination program), you
can earn even more.
Pay-per-lead programs also will not cost you money.
Affiliate networks generally don’t require their affiliates to
pay for membership. There are, however, some people who
claim that they can teach you how to implement successful
PPL campaigns on your website or domains; they generally
require you to subscribe or pay a one-time fee for their help
or guidance. It’s your choice whether or not to sign up for
such programs.
Pay-per-lead programs, if you don’t pay for PPL income-
generation systems, are one of the most cost-efficient forms
of domain monetization. It won’t cost you much money since
you already have the domain properties. You only need to pay
for hosting and probably some content with which to fill your
domains. Furthermore, if you don’t do incentive-type lead
generation, you won’t have to offer any monetary incentive
or free products which can cost you something (although you
can easily recoup these through your PPL income). In general
PPL programs, it’s the advertisers who provide the incentives.
Finally, there are a lot of lead generation programs and
opportunities online. You can offer different programs
on your website so you will have a lot of options for your
domains. These PPL programs belong to various industries so
you’re probably going to find a suitable program for all your
Domain Distribution
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 41
network
 Feature: Taking the “Lead”
domain properties.
Disadvantages:
There are disadvantages to PPL programs, naturally. First,
the payments per lead are lower than payments per sale.
This is especially true if the advertisers offer big-ticket items
and you are on a percent-share type of setup. If your referral
buys a $3,000 gadget, for instance, and you get 30% of the
sale price, you will earn $900 on that single sale. If you
make ten successful referrals in one day, you can earn $9,000
with little or no effort from a CPS monetization scheme! It
is easier to convince customers to sign up forms than to buy
something. You conversion rate is thus higher in PPL than
PPC; even if you earn only $20 per lead (say, in the consumer
electronics industry) and you can convert 500 visitors into
leads, you can earn $10,000.
Another drawback of PPL programs lie in the variable
advertisers’ definition of qualified leads. Some will pay you
for all types of leads. Some, however, are targeting only
residents of certain countries, a certain gender (female or
male) or a certain age group. Thus, your lead generation
sites do need to be carefully designed so that it draws your
(or rather your advertisers’) desired audience. Otherwise,
you cannot earn as much money from PPL.
Shifting over from domain parking and PPC to a PPL
monetization platform will require you to institute some
changes – these will take some effort and time to do. For
instance, you will have to develop your site so they won’t look
too much like an ad page. At the very least, if you decide
42 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
to stick with the ‘domain parking’ modus operandi (i.e. no
content), you have to replace your PPC units with PPL units.
In that case, however, you may want to tweak your PPL ad
units so they will look like typical PPC ad units. This would
take some work.
More work is also required if, at a future date, you find
better-paying models than your current PPL programs. In
that case, fully operational websites will require a lot of
changes, not the least of which is changing the PPL ads
displayed on each page. Of course, if you are using a web
platform like WordPress for your domain, then you can easily
change your single post.php or page.php template to make
sweeping pages on all of your posts and pages. However,
if you have a static rather than a dynamic one, you will be
required to manually change your ads on each of the pages.
Unless domainers have had the foresight to use a dynamic
web platform for their parked pages, the latter case is the
more likely scenario for domainers who follow the ‘domain
parking’ M.O. (albeit you probably have to host your own
pages in this case because domain parking services usually
serve PPC rather than PPL ads and PPL networks usually
require their affiliates to have self-hosted websites).
To Be Continued Next Issue...
Be sure to catch our March/April 2009 issue, where we’ll
talk about how to use lead generation to monetize your own
domains.
 Column: Rookies and Big Tickets

Rookies and Big-Tickets Don’t follow

Is there Money in Fresh Domain Name Registrations? idle murmurs...
by Kevin Ohashi

Can you buy a domain name today and flip it for a million bucks? It’s a
common notion that domain names are easy money and million dollar sales
are always the first domain name sales cited. However, experts intuitively
know this is misleading but perhaps nobody has really looked closely. Taking
the top ~94 sales off namebio (excluded a few .de/.no/.at and a couple that
were dropped since being purchased back in pre-2000 bubble) and looking at
registration date and comparing to sales price was very interesting.

Next, I BIN’d total dollars in sales in each year and did a simple linear
regression. The results are telling:

Stay on the Pulse

Pulse.

Updated daily, DomainPulse.com

brings the lastest news and views
from all corners of the globe.

There were only 2 sales in the 500k range that were registered post-2000.
AntiSpyware.com and Music.mobi (*Note: this didn’t actually sell, thanks to
Adam Strong for first making me aware of this). The first makes sense as a
new huge technology hit. The second is a huge speculative play. Every other
domain that has publicly fetched over 500k was registered a long time ago.
So there are two explanations that are reasonable:

1. All the *REALLY* good domains are taken, and have been for years.

2. The fresh registrations that are fetching big dollars aren’t publicly
reported and it’s some new registration conspiracy.

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate the conspiracy theory garbage, The Beat on the
so that leaves only one reasonable explanation. So, I decided to investigate Domain Name Industry
further, maybe $500,000 is too low to see any real results. I went down to all
sales over $100,000 (and a few in high $9x,xxx range. I removed non Com/
net/org/uk names because my parsing software doesn’t handle them (sorry
.mobi, .de who were the ones that were removed most).

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 43

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44 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
 Column: Rookies and Big Tickets

Big-ticket sale vs. year registered

Now, this is the most interesting graph of the entire analysis. There are 361
samples that fit the >$100,000 criteria and this shows distribution in terms of
year and price. What is immediately obvious is the following:
1. The best domains were registered in the 90’s in general.
2. There is some opportunity in more newly registered domains, but it is
minuscule compared to older registrations.
3. Hand hand-registrations selling for even $100,000 isn’t happening.

Upon inspection of the newest domains fetching high prices, the top one in
2008 was Shoppers.com, an expired name. A couple others were drops from the
2000 bubble being re-registered.

In conclusion, purchasing a domain by hand (not registered right now) and

selling for even $100,000 just simply doesn’t happen. I am sure there will be a
couple exceptions over the years, but anyone who reasonably thinks they are
hand-registering ‘the next big thing’ will almost certainly be wrong and would be
better off with a lottery ticket according to these results.

The only real chance at a big sale is new TLDs it seems or buying older
domains at a good price and reselling it. So anyone considering getting into
domain names to become rich over night, should not. Save your money, educate
yourself, learn some useful skills (think web development skills: html, php,
mysql, seo), your chances at being successful and increasing your net worth are
more likely to increase with hard work and knowledge than speculation.

Special thanks to NameThink for asking this question at DomainState and

giving me the inspiration to do this research.

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 45

46 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
Domainer’s Toolbox: 5 Great Registrars
5 Great Domain Registrars
A quick review of a few domain brokers that
can get you into the game.
When choosing your domain registrar, it’s a good idea
to look closely and read the fine print. You should carefully
check each registrar’s policies and features to find the best
one for you. If you need some suggestions, consider one of
the following options that have been getting a lot of press
(mostly good).
1&1
This European web hosting and domain registration
company currently charges $8.99 for gTLD mainstays (e.g.
.com, .net, .org, .info, .name, and .biz) and .us domains.
The price of one domain name includes various features
and extras. For instance, it comes with a free inbox (e.g.
yourname@yourdomain.com) with a storage capacity of 2
GB. You can designate 100 email aliases. You can activate
a catch-all email address for any mail addressed to whatever
alias @yourdomain.tld. Autoresponder and email forwarder
utilities are also included in the service.
You can also use your domain account to host 5 subdomains
for every domain; you can do this by going to your 1&1
domain management dashboard and add up to 5 subdomains
for every domain registered. Your 1&1 domain management
account can be used to manage 5 other externally registered
domain names; you can do this by editing your name servers
in your external registrar/s and changing them to the 1&1’s
name servers. Free private registration is also included.
A starter website builder and a SimpleSubmission tool
are some of the features included in the domain price. This
registrar also provides email and phone support 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week.
48 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
The good: Price-wise, their domain prices belong to the
lower end of the spectrum, especially given the extras that
are included free with the domain registration price. This
registrar actually offers a basic web hosting plan starting at
$3.99 per month; you can get this instead and get a free
domain – which remains free of charge as long as the web
hosting plan remains active. You can, moreover, transfer this
domain to another registrar even if your site or landing pages
are hosted with them.
This company is also fond of offering promotions; you
can get very favorable terms from them if you time your
registration right. Just this year, they had a promo in which
you could have registered up to 25 .biz domains free of charge
for one year. There have been promos that gave new clients
3 years of free web hosting services. It’s worth your while to
check on this domain registrar regularly and see if there are
any promotions that suit your needs.
Technology-wise, 1&1 is in the swing of things. They have
systems in place to constantly monitor, analyze and maintain
system stability; they have data and power backups; they
have industry-standard compliant data center processes and
they have 99.9% uptime. You don’t have to worry about
suddenly losing your domain registration records or access to
the administrative functions of the domain.
The domain management tools are rather standard, but
the 2GB inbox, the email forwarder and the autoresponder
are good extras. The fact that you can manage both your
domains and your websites under one account can be an
advantage if you want one-stop solutions. Furthermore,
the value added services that come with their web hosting
packages are amazingly gratifying. A $4.99-per-month
 Domainer’s Toolbox: 5 Great Registrars

web hosting plan will get you free AdSense, adCenter, YSM, and Citysearch
advertising vouchers worth $125 in all. You’ll also get 2 domains that will
remain free as long as your web hosting account is active, around 1,200 email
accounts and 10 FTP accounts. If you’d rather keep you domain host and web
host separate (it’s not hard to change name servers), however, you may opt for
a separate web host and domain registrar.

The bad: The interface is simple, but it is not as intuitive and user friendly as
other registrars’ account management (or even web host administration) panels.
Some find it to be too simple it has become somewhat lacking and inadequate
for efficient domain management. For what it has, the interface works well, but
it’s not for everyone. The control panel can be slow to respond sometimes, but
not significantly so; the uptime is excellent so this is no deal breaker either. The
website builder that comes with the basic domain package – i.e. one registered
domain – is not as good as other web site building applications. This, however,
is understandable; they do say outright that the website builder that comes with
domain name registration is merely their starter edition.

The main weakness of this domain registrar lies in customer support. The
company’s customer support standards are mediocre at best. They take too long
to respond to customer concerns; some say there are obvious communication
problems since the service personnel are typically non-native English speakers.
Typical customer support problems include routine domain procedures such as
account cancellations, renewal alerts, domain transfers, domain forwarding,
and automatic billing.

eNom
This domain name registrar’s main products are domain name registration,
domain name reselling and domain name hosting. They also offer related
products including email hosting services, business listing, web hosting, ID
protect services, web site creation software, etc. With the help of its various
resellers and bulk domain registrants, eNom has one of the largest collections
of registered domains. Around 11 million domains are registered through eNom
directly or through its network of domain resellers.

eNom offers four main domain name registration/domain name reselling

plans: alternative, basic, volume, and premier. They are actually all styled
as “domain reseller” plans. eNom charges a one-time set-up fee that varies
with the plan selected; this kind of deal is bound to attract the named target
– domain name resellers that can easily recoup the one-time fee through their
customers’ domain registration fees or indirectly through their revenues from
other services such as web hosting with free domain registration. The one-
time set-up fee is designed to attract those who are committed to eNom; only
those who plan to stay with eNom will pay the set-up fee. Finally, serious
domainers are also apparently a target; eNom offers a wide variety of domain-
management, development and marketing tools that serious domainers need if
they plan to maximize the potential of their domain assets.

Domain name hosting (eNom’s domain name services or DNS) is also offered
to domainers. This time, however, domainers are given the choice of staying
with their current registrars yet the opportunity of ‘trying out’ so to speak,
eNom’s domain management services. You can keep your registration records
with your external registrar but associate your domain names with eNom name
servers. This way, undecided customers can try out the service first before they
finally decide to move or transfer their domains to eNom.

The good: eNom gives domainers a very comprehensive selection of domain

name extensions. Their domain name reseller plans are feature-packed. The
domain name registration features include dynamic domain name servers; this
reduces domain name resolution errors and ensures that your domain names
will always be accessible. Every domain name, moreover, can be immediately
parked. Thus, there’s no need to sign up with a third-party domain parking
service; this means easier and more convenient domain management and

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 49

Domainer’s Toolbox: 5 Great Registrars
domain parking administration. The reports feature that you
can use for generating reports on domain usage, domain
auctions and other domain-related transactions, moreover,
can be a valuable tool for domainers.
eNom also gives domainers free domain development
and site management tools. A website creation program
is included for easy website building; you can use this for
customizing your landing page, for instance. The domainers
are also given an easy way of staying in touch with site
visitors through the free name-my-phone application. This
utility will give site visitors the ability to send text messages
from the site to the mobile phone you have listed for such
purposes. Furthermore, if a site visitor needs to meet with
you personally, you can give them your map subdomain (say,
map.yourdomain.tld), where a map and directions to the
address you have chosen to give for this purpose is readily
available.
eNom also naturally offers all the free utilities and features
that other domain registrars provide with domain name
registration. These include the domain management control
panel, domain bulk management tools, domain name services
(i.e. you can use eNom’s domain name servers), URL and
email forwarding, subdomains, automatic renewal, a registrar
lock to protect your domain against unauthorized transfers,
and a domain name suggestion tool. Domainers and domain
resellers, moreover, can easily develop their domains through
the additional services that eNom offers to clients.
The bad: eNom, however, is not the most affordable domain
name registrar around. eNom is for serious domainers who
want all the tools that domainers find useful. It is probably
not for starters who balk at paying a $195 set-up fee for the
alternative reselling plan offered at eNom. Furthermore, in
this plan, one domain costs $10.95 per year. Prices are better
with higher-end plans; in the premier domain reselling plan
that costs $1595 at set-up, domain names cost only $6.95
per year. From plan basic to premier, moreover, domain
resellers can opt to pay no set-up fee and purchase points,
instead. The points can be ‘spent’ on a variety of services
including domain name registration. A single point costs $1;
the minimum point purchase is $1,495 for basic, $3,975 for
volume and $6,995 for premier.
The domain name service for domainers who have externally
registered domains is far from being affordable. You can use
the service for $10 a domain per year, which is already the
cost of domain registration at other registrars. Furthermore,
domainers who do not want to get a domain reseller plan can
still register or transfer their domains to eNom. However,
eNom’s charge for domain registration outside the reselling
plans is very expensive; one domainer reported that he was
charged an annual registration fee of $29.95 for one domain
– and that’s just for domain registration without the extras
that come with the reseller plans.
eNom, moreover, has also been known to freeze
domainers’ accounts without informing the domain owners
first. Earlier this year, a domainer’s Cuba-related domain
names (e.g. cuba-havanacity.com) were frozen by eNom
without informing Mr. Marshall, the owner. Apparently, Mr.
Marshall’s domain names were included in the U.S. Treasury’s
Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) list of blacklisted
sites and eNom followed its mandate and froze Mr. Marshall’s
domain without first informing Mr. Marshall. What makes it
questionable is the fact that Mr. Marshall is actually British
national and the sites he ran were not even for Americans.
50 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
Additionally, there have also been recent phishing attacks
directed against eNom customers. Some eNom customers
received emails informing them of an upcoming maintenance
and encouraged the customers to click on a link to a .biz
domain. The question now is how the phishers obtained the
customers’ names and contact information.
GoDaddy
In the 2008 Domain Name Wire survey of 841 domainers,
GoDaddy emerged as the best domain registrar; it gained
52% of the votes cast on the best domain name registrar.
This is also the biggest domain registrar; about one-sixth
of all domains – over 35 million domains – are registered
through GoDaddy.
GoDaddy’s standard price is $10.69 per year for .com
domains. That’s just the basic fee; there’s an additional .20
ICANN fee. At this moment, however, they currently have a
promo in which you can register a .com domain for $9.99 and
transfer a domain for $6.99. A .info domain can be registered
for $0.99 right now.
With domain registration, domainers get a lot of extras
including free, ad-supported web hosting with a drag-and-
drop, WYSIWYG web site builder; GoDaddy will include a
leaderboard-type ad unit in exchange for the free hosting.
Podcasting and blogging tools are included in the package,
including a blog and podcast notification or broadcasting
feature. They have photo album utility for easy storing,
uploading and sharing of photos; this program includes photo
editing and password protection. Registrants also get a
personalized email address with a 1-GB inbox.
Domain registration features include URL forwarding with
masking, email forwarding with 100 email aliases, automatic
renewal, registrar lock, and automated alerts. Domainers can
also lease their domains out or give another person control of
their domain properties by changing their contact information
through the domain management interface.
The Good: Domain prices are low and the features included
in the domain registration price far exceed the cost of domain
registration. The relatively low price and the domain/website
development tools provided with registration make GoDaddy
one of the most cost-efficient domain registrars around. The
free web hosting alone makes the annual fee of $10.69 worth
the price of domain registration. Furthermore, those who
want to host their own site can actually avail of basic hosting
that starts at $4.99 every month. GoDaddy therefore suits
those domainers who want a lot of bells and whistles to come
with their basic domain name registration package.
GoDaddy also has great customer service. They can
be contacted through email, phone and online support.
Furthermore, they look out for their domainers’ interests.
In the recent case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky
against some gambling-related domains, GoDaddy did not
automatically surrender the target domain names that are
registered with them to Kentucky. They did tell the judge
they would follow whatever judgment is handed down but
only after the case is deemed resolved and closed. They
are therefore unlike eNom, who immediately surrendered
and froze Mr. Marshall’s Cuba-related domains after they
have been blacklisted by OFAC. In another story, a domain
called MakeUseOf.com has been hijacked by another party;
this was successfully and quickly returned by GoDaddy to the
 Domainer’s Toolbox: 5 Great Registrars

real owner. The problem, moreover, did not originate through a breach of Europe
GoDaddy’s security; instead, the domainer’s identity and domain ownership
was compromised through his own Gmail account.
www.europeregistry.com
The bad: GoDaddy charges extra for private registration, though. It
costs $8.99 a year to keep domain registration information private, although
GoDaddy currently has a promo where domainers who register or transfer
five domains and more can get free privacy registration for them. Domain
parking, moreover, is not something that comes free with domain registration.
com pt
GoDaddy also provides services that domainers can use for developing their
domains such as domain content provision and customized headers that other co uk
domain registrars don’t offer, but they are paid services.
ro
GoDaddy, moreover, has very aggressive marketing policies. They always
try to sell their registrants more services. This can be an inconvenience, but
it is obviously not significant enough to turn domainers against GoDaddy. lv be
Finally, domainers who wanted to transfer their domains to other registrars
used to have a problem with GoDaddy’s domain transfer policies. GoDaddy
used to prohibit the transfer of domains if their whois information has been
changed anytime in the past 60 days. This issue has been resolved, however, es
and domainers who have changed their whois information can now transfer
their domains immediately.
dk
Ipnic.com de
This domainer offers .com domain names for $19.95 per year, with a
maximum of 10 years. The same price applies for .net, .org, .info, .biz,
.name, and .in domain names. Ipnic.com also offers various other paid
services including managed domain name service for managing your domain’s ru
.eu
CNAME, MX, and other such records ($5/year), email forwarding ($5/year),
domain forwarding ($5/year), email hosting (starts at $0.49/month), website
builder (starts at $0.99/month), digital certificates (starts at $69/year) and
at
web hosting (starts at $1.99/month).
it
pl
gr
ch
nl

co ee
cz

no

Your Complete...

CORPORATION

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 51

Domainer’s Toolbox: 5 Great Registrars

The good: Ipnic.com domain registration

records and hosting accounts are very secure.
This domain name registrar has a multi-layered
approach to security. Data centers are evaluated
and vetted to ensure compliance with security
standards and to protect the consumers’ privacy.
Networks are protected against DDOS attacks
through constant monitoring and active blocking
of targeted attacks; this includes firewall at two
levels (user-end and the rack) as well as host-
based anti-intrusion systems. The system has
proved to be very successful at mitigating denial
of service attacks. Not only is the whole system
protected by security and anti-intrusion software,
the equipment and hardware used in data centers,
moreover, has been chosen on the basis of their
security track records.

Ipnic.com enforces periodic scanning of

the data systems, periodic security audits and
careful vetting of personnel at all levels to avoid
information leaks. Furthermore, while Ipnic.com
is diligent in keeping their systems and software
up-to-date, they do not upgrade without testing
them first to ensure system stability.

Customer service personnel are friendly and

helpful; their customer support staff is excellent.
Domain management can also be easier to
manage with the customizable API. Any domain transfers
come with 1-year extensions. If you are planning to develop
your domains and create fully operational websites to go
with them, moreover, the value added services will make the
transition very easy; you can easily start your own online
store or a made-for-ads website.
The bad: The security assurance and the 30-day money-
back guarantee for some services obviously jacked up the
prices. Ipnic.com’s domain name prices are not the lowest
in the industry, although they are certainly not the highest.
Furthermore, the addition of more domainer-centered
features will improve the domain name registration service
a lot; the modifiable API is great but it helps only those who
know programming or employ someone who does.

Moniker
Moniker is owned by Oversee.net and is now one of the
fastest growing domain registrars. Their main services
include single domain name registration service, bulk
domain registration service (up to 500 names at once) and
domain transfer services ($16.99 per year up to 10 years;
bulk domain transfer of up to 1,000 domains is possible).
They also offer alternative yet paid services including private
registration, domain name appraisal, maxlock, and domain
theft protection.

Domain names with a .com extension currently cost $8.02

while .net domains currently cost $6.64; but remember that
these are wholesale prices. The standard .com registration
price is $9.95 per domain. Unlike eNom, Moniker does
not charge a set-up fee; anyone can open a free account
at no charge. They offer five prepaid accounts which you
can fund with any amount ranging from $50 to $1,000; the
prepaid accounts can be used for bulk domain registration at
wholesale domain prices. Domain registration comes with
free domain parking and free domain traffic monitoring.

The good: Moniker offers a well-rounded solution that

domainers who are serious about domaining can definitely
use. Domain appraisal, backordering, domain auctions,
domain escrow services, web hosting, email forwarding, URL

52 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 53
Domainer’s Toolbox: 5 Great Registrars

forwarding, bulk domain registration, bulk domain transfer,

and domain parking services are all available under the
Moniker brand (or with a sister company). Although most of
these services cost extra, having them all available at Moniker
makes domain name administration and monetization easier.

Domain portfolio management is made even better with

the customization options available to domainers. Through
this, domainers can choose their default settings that will be
in place every time they register new domains. Thus, there
is no need to tweak settings every time a new domain is
added to the domain portfolio. Moniker also offers domainers
a special API that they can modify for the purpose of domain
management automation. Furthermore, if you avail of various
services, you can still manage all of your domain transactions
– purchases, sales and parking earnings – right from your
Moniker domain management interface.
as Moniker is one of the most active advocates for domainers’
The domain management interface, moreover, is very rights.
flexible and makes management of thousands of domain
names more manageable. They have various sorting options; Customer service at Moniker is also excellent. Domain
you can sort domains by category, expiration date and other security is also superb; there is auto domain locking both at
attributes. Furthermore, domain reports are easily accessible; the registrar (that’s Moniker) and at the registry level.
overviews, detailed views and downloads are available.
The bad: The interface, however, needs some getting
Moniker, moreover, is one of the most vocal supporters of used to. Non-bulk domainers will probably find the variety of
the domainers in their recent clash with the state of Kentucky. options confusing rather than useful. Furthermore, note that
Moniker did not surrender the domains involved on the prepaid funds are non-refundable. You can only use them
judge’s say-so; in fact, Moniker is actively fighting the decree for domain name registrations and transactions but you can’t
that the domains that are supposedly ‘luring’ Kentuckians withdraw them to your bank or credit card account.
to internet gambling have to be transferred into Kentucky’s
keeping. Moniker’s current stance is not surprising, actually,

54 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com

 Domain Sales
Accountwatch.com alaskafishingadventure.com
$5,000 $5,000
its@mercurylink.net its@mercurylink.net
1.815.346.5866 1.815.346.5866

allgoodthingsonline.com xtremeblackjack.com
$1,000 $5,000
its@mercurylink.net its@mercurylink.net
1.815.346.5866 1.815.346.5866

route67.com collegesportstickets.com
$10,000 $20,000
its@mercurylink.net its@mercurylink.net
1.815.346.5866 1.815.346.5866

onlyflags.com myfamilypics.com
$1,000 $5,000
its@mercurylink.net its@mercurylink.net
1.815.346.5866 1.815.346.5866

laserprinterepair.com lifeinsurancepolicy.org
$10,000 $2500
its@mercurylink.net its@mercurylink.net
1.815.346.5866 1.815.346.5866

igotcheated.com globaldomainregistrar.com
$5,000 $75,000
its@mercurylink.net its@mercurylink.net
1.815.346.5866 1.815.346.5866

goldencolorado.org domain4sale.org
$5,000 $2,000
its@mercurylink.net its@mercurylink.net
1.815.346.5866 1.815.346.5866

Disclaimer: All prices listed are subjective offers only and do not represent any iMonetize and Domainer’s Magazine are not responsible for any losses or
commitment on the part of the seller to accept any bids placed at the listed price. damages, consequential or otherwise, suffered as a result of a transaction initiated
Any statistics or claims provided by seller have NOT been verified by Domainer’s from information provided on this page.
Magazine and it suggested that you verify.

CLASSIFIEDS

www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 55

56 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
 Advertiser’s Index
DNJournal . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Domain Capital . . . . . . . . . . 19
DomainFest . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Domain Pulse . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Domainer’s Magazine . . . . . . . . 4
Escrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
EuroDNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Fabulous . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Grassroots.Org . . . . . . . . . . 21
IPNIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Instra Corporation . . . . . 45,47,49,51
Internet Commerce Association . . . 56
InterNetX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Domain Sponsor . . . . . . . . . . . 3
NameMedia . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
ParkQuick . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Sedo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
SES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Subprime Domains . . . . . . . . . 37
Thought Convergence . . . . . . 29, 33
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. . . . . . . . . Back cover
TriState Computer Center . . . . 22-23
United Domains . . . . . . . . . . . 9
WADND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
WhyPark . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
www.domainersmagazine.com | January/February 2009 | 57
 Department: Rants and Raves
Rants & Raves
Going into domaining to get rich quick? You
might be better off losing an arm.
By Mike St.John
So my good old rick-rolling buddy, Kevin Ohashi,
contributed an article to the magazine this month (see page
43-44) dissecting if big money is still out there with new
registrations. So I know I’ve thrown the wrecking ball around
when it comes to “hunting the white whale” (Volume 2, Issue
4) but his article fired up the ranting juices, and--here we are.
New Domainers still seem to get a false sense of hope
when they enter the domaining industry. Some still maintain
their starry-eyed delusions, but there’s a reason for that. The
notion that overnight millionaires with no online development
experience is based on decade-old anecdotes (yes, there
were still plenty of great name grabs out there in 1999), get-
rich-quick promises, ebay domain sales, dated books on how
to make money in the domain industry and more...we’ve all
seen it.
So maybe you’re one of the people that bought the promise,
planted it in the backyard, and expected a lollipop tree. If
that’s the case, I have a surefire get-rich-quick scheme: Go
to home depot and head for the back of the store, head into
lumber--that little section where they cut paneling for you.
Fire up that wicked-huge saw, cry “Excelsior”, and cut your
arm clean off.*
Sounds harsh, but you’ll make more money losing an arm
on disability. It’s not 1999 anymore kids, and while there are
still plenty of opportunities to make money in the domain
industry, that money doesn’t spontaneously materialize like
it used to.
Thinking that you can buy a hand register (new domain)
and instantly sell it for a million dollars is just as insane as
auto-amputation at a hardware store.
*DOMAINER’s MAGAZINE doesn’t actually recommend cutting your arm off, even if you did fall for one of the mentioned schemes.
58 | January/February 2009 | www.domainersmagazine.com
Sure, you may get lottery-ticket lucky. You could invent a
new phrase, while on the other side of the world a company
names its new grape-flavored vodka after your shiny new
domain. Would they offer you a chunk of cash? It could
happen, but it’s just as likely you’ll lose your bladder when
you’re handed your very first WIPO suit.
I’m not trying to discourage new buyers in the marketplace,
but if you’re hand registering and you’re still a greenhorn,
don’t look for the home run. Don’t even swing away too hard.
Bunt a few times, take an easy single. Hand Regging a 10.00
name and selling it for 20.00 doubles your cash (find a better
deal than that in todays economy).
Be smart with your hand reg’s. Don’t register what you
can’t use for PPC or what you don’t plan to develop. Even
if you’re not building a full-service site, try to semi-develop
before you sell; give the domain some legs before you flip it.
Just like flipping a house, you don’t buy a piece of crap shack
thats falling apart for 50 grand and try and sell it for 200
grand in the exact same shape. Fancy the junker up, add some
paint, maybe a roof, a new door. Same goes for domains. A
facelift for the name can go a long way if you’re marketing it,
even for 20.00. Now please take note of this, stop diluting the
domain pool with all sorts of crazy ass names, and don’t come
back complaining “someone said I could make 20.00 on each
of these!” We’ve all heard it too many times, and you most
certainly don’t want the kick in the ass.
Well, this was a productive session of Domaining (as
percieved by a madman). Don’t forget to take a look at Kevin
Ohashi’s article, its a good read and sobering advice for any
newcomers.
GreatDomains
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