Be Interviewed on DomainSherpa
Every Friday, DomainSherpa.com provides you with a hand-curated, no-B.S., important domain name industry news.
In this summary, you will also find the latest tutorials and videos produced by DomainSherpa staff and contributors.
This Week’s Featured DomainSherpa Show
- VIDEO: How Frank Schilling Values Domain Names with AMR and ADT
Do you wonder how Frank Schilling prices domain names? What criteria he uses to value domains? And how much art versus science is involved?In this excerpt from a DomainSherpa Review, Frank Schilling discusses AMR (average monthly revenue) and ADT (average daily traffic), and why these two metrics make up only 20 percent of his domain name valuation methodology.
This Week’s News in Review
ICANN Asks FTC and OCA to Review .Sucks – 09-Apr-15
ICANN asks government agencies for feedback on .sucks plan. ICANN has sent a letter to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA), asking them to consider if Vox Populi’s plans for the .sucks top level domain are violating any laws or regulations these agencies enforce. .Sucks registry Vox Populi has…
ICANN Reports .Sucks to the FTC Over “Predatory” Pricing – 09-Apr-15
ICANN has referred .sucks registry Vox Populi to the US Federal Trade Commission over concerns from intellectual property owners that its pricing is “predatory”. The organization has asked the FTC and the Canadian Office of Consumer Affairs to determine whether Vox Pop is breaking any laws. It asks both agencies to “consider assessing and determining…
MySchool.com Domain Name Owner Fights Back After Lawsuit – 09-Apr-15
Domain name owner alleges reverse domain name hijacking. Original Web Ventures has responded to a lawsuit filed against its domain name MySchool.com, and has made claims of its own against plaintiff Joseph Carpenter. Carpenter filed an in rem lawsuit against MySchool.com in February after losing two separate UDRP cases over the domain name. The lawsuit…
UDRP Panel Finds Not Responding to C&D Letter is Bad Faith: 14 Year Old Mascot.nl Lost – 09-Apr-15
“Mascot International A/S of Silkeborg, Denmark, just won the rights to the domain name mascot.nl which was registered on October 31, 2001. Complainant, a Danish company has a Benelux trademark for the term MASCOT which is really a figurative mark for the word MASCOT as written in a special script: which was granted in January…
Lady Gaga Dumps .org for Freebie New gTLD – 09-Apr-15
With all the recent headlines about celebrities who feel compelled to protect their personal brands in .porn and .sucks, it’s worth noting that celebs also find new gTLDs useful. Lady Gaga has re-domained her Born This Way Foundation non-profit, dumping a .org for a domain in the new gTLD .foundation. The old bornthiswayfoundation.org, which still…
DomainNameSales Increases Sales Commissions – 09-Apr-15
Rate increased to 15%, in line with competitors. DomainNameSales.com is increasing the fee it charges for brokering a sale from 12.5% to 15.0%. The commission applies to existing negotiations for which a deal hasn’t been reached. In justifying the price increase, DNS VP of Sales Jeff Gabriel wrote: Over the past 90 days we have…
.US Domains are Subject to Being Suspended Under URS – 09-Apr-15
.US domain names have became subject to the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) policy. Actually ICANN site on the URS specifically says that .US domain names are not subject to the URS Technically the decision is a usRS for the .usTLD Rapid Suspension System (the “Rules”). In the National Arbitration Forum decision, Beachbody, LLC of Santa…
.Flowers Gets 24k+ Registrations; But Over 98% are Registered By North Sound Names – 08-Apr-15
Uniregistry launched .Flowers into general availability yesterday and ended the day with 24,194 registrations according to ntldstats.com However it appears that North Sound Names, owned by the principal of Uniregistry, registered over 98% of the domain names. The registrar with the 2nd most .Flowers registrations was CSC with 100 domains, which were all trademark holders…
Donuts Challenges .Charity Decision – 08-Apr-15
Company invokes Independent Review Process over year-old objection decision. New top level domain name company Donuts has filed for an Independent Review Process over a community objection decision for .Charity. The Independent Objector filed community objections against both Donuts and Famous Four Media for their .charity applications. Surprisingly, the panelist ruled that the objection prevailed…
FastCompany Covers The New gTLD’s: Highlights Coffee.club – 08-Apr-15
Fast Company just gave some love to the new gTLD program with a using Coffee.club as one of the success stories “Instead of having only a few meaningless TLDs like .com, .net, .biz, and country codes like .ly, the organization agreed to usher in a more freeform system: Why not have more specific options like…
NPR: A New Internet Domain: Extortion Or Free Speech? – 07-Apr-15
A rash of new Web domain suffixes have popped up in recent years to supplement .com or .net — terms such as .bargains or .dating. Several new suffixes seem to invite negative feedback. There’s .gripe and .fail. There’s even .wtf — a colorful variation on “what the heck.” And soon, there will be .sucks.
Neustar Files Suit Against The FCC – 07-Apr-15
Neustar (NSR) is suing the FCC over the loss of the Local Number Portability contract which it held for 18 years. Neustar which has watched the price of its stock drop close to 50% from August 2, 2013 when the shares were at $55.71, initiated a $150 million share buyback once the contract loss was…
Three Registrars Suspended By ICANN – 07-Apr-15
ICANN has enforced the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement against three more registrars, suspending their ability to sell gTLD domain names. Canadian registrar Namevault, along with Signdomains and Times Internet of India, cannot sell domains or accept inbound transfers from April 21 to July 20, according to ICANN compliance notices. Namevault’s suspension came after it got…
Dot Website Hits 50,000 Registrations – 06-Apr-15
Dot Webstie hits the 50,000 registration mark Radix released some stats about one of their strings today, Dot Website went over 50,000 regs, they did actually give my OnlineCasino.website sale a mention. To be fair it was not for a huge amount but profit is profit (non premium registation of $14.99). I have mentioned that…
Donuts Files Interesting Trademark Applications – 06-Apr-15
Donuts files trademark applications, likely for marketing campaign. Top level domain name registry Donuts has filed two interesting trademark applications. The applications are for the marks: I Am.___________ We Are.__________ My guess is this is for a marketing campaign, as it runs nicely with its current video ads that show a number of options to…
Big Changes Proposed to DNS Overseer ICANN – 03-Apr-15
Domain name overseer ICANN is likely to go through a radical reorganization if it wants to be given more control of critical internet functions, currently run under contract from the US government.
Mydogbuddy Rebrands to Dogbuddy.com a Domain They Bought for $350 On GoDaddy – 03-Apr-15
Techcrunch covered, merger of two pet sitting services in Europe. “MyDogBuddy, has merged with its Spanish rival Bibulu, to become what it claims is the largest offering of its kind, citing a combined 10,000 local dog sitters registered with the platform.” “The merger also sees a rebranding of the combined entity to the much simpler…
Kevin Spacey Among First .Sucks Buyers – 03-Apr-15
Kevin Spacey, Google, Apple and Microsoft are among the first to buy .sucks domains in apparent attempts to protect their reputations. Vox Populi Registry, which took .sucks to its sunrise period on Monday, has started publishing the names of sunrise registrants on its web site. Names scrolling past on a ticker stream this morning include…
Aids.sucks at $1.5 Million and Other .Sucks Premium Weirdness – 03-Apr-15
The new .sucks gTLD has some interesting pricing for its reserved premium names. Notably aids.sucks, which currently carries a $1.5 million first-year fee at one registrar. As far as I can tell, 101domain is the only registrar that is currently publishing its prices for .sucks premium names. I had a bit of a play around…
.Org Up 1.3% in 2014 to 10.5+ Million Domain Names – 02-Apr-15
Public Interest Registry, the not-for-profit operator of the .org domain, released the results of its bi-annual domain name report “The Dashboard,” detailing the worldwide growth of .org in 2014. The report reveals that the number of .org domain names registered…
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