Domain: domainworks.biz
Stories and comments across the archive that link to domainworks.biz.
Comments · 4
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VC money is changing the parking businessRosenblatt's company, Demand Media, is the best illustration of how the domain business is changing. Domain parking used to be dominated by a fairly small community of "domainers," who bought up one-word or two-word domains, filled them with ads, and made money off type-in traffic and misspellings. That all changed in early 2005 when a public company, Marchex, paid $165 million to buy a huge portfolio of names from a Hong Kong domain speculator. Suddenly everyone wanted to be a domainer and make millions. Sales of new domains surged, and resale prices rose.
But soon Google and Yahoo, who provide most of the ads on parked sites, found that click-throughs from parked pages often didn't lead to sales, and many advertisers didn't want to buy AdWords and then have them show up on these sites with no content. Some of the largest parking services began switching to a pay-per-action business model, instead of pay-per-click.
Meanwhile, venture capital firms started pumping money into the sector, buying up registrars (like Demand Media's deals for eNom and BulkRegister) and large domain portfolios. Vector Capital bought Register.com, and Perot has a piece of Internet REIT. The VCs and Wall Street investors prefer to monetize their domains with developed web sites instead of parked pages. Many of them are using free user generated content to populate these sites with articles and forums linked to their target keywords. Google likes these sites better, and they appear to get more relevant traffic and click-throughs.
But there will always be plenty of smaller operators with thousands of single-page ad-filled parked domains. The low price of domains means there's virtually no barrier for entry into this business, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.
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Bad Idea, But They'll Sell Like HotcakesYes, it's a bad idea, for the many reasons outlined in other posts. But expect to see frenzied bidding for these domains when they go on sale. Adult sites have always been big buyers of domains to generate traffic for their sites. Even if most porn operators don't want to do business within the
.xxx TLD (where they can be easily filtered), they may want to own the .xxx domains associated with their "brands." Wanne-be porn kings may also see the sale of the new domains as an opportunity to make a landgrab.With domain pros making big profits on domain name resales and venture capitalists planning large investments in domain names, expect rampant speculation in
.xxx domains once sales begin. -
Bad Idea, But They'll Sell Like HotcakesYes, it's a bad idea, for the many reasons outlined in other posts. But expect to see frenzied bidding for these domains when they go on sale. Adult sites have always been big buyers of domains to generate traffic for their sites. Even if most porn operators don't want to do business within the
.xxx TLD (where they can be easily filtered), they may want to own the .xxx domains associated with their "brands." Wanne-be porn kings may also see the sale of the new domains as an opportunity to make a landgrab.With domain pros making big profits on domain name resales and venture capitalists planning large investments in domain names, expect rampant speculation in
.xxx domains once sales begin. -
more interesting
I find that there is a trade rag website called Domain Works far more interesting news. What happens in the exciting world of URL names?