Website-Address.com

Moniker Acquired for $65 Million

After recently buying Snapnames in May for $35 Million, Oversee.net has snapped up Moniker for $65M.  This will help Oversee.net strengthen their position in the highly competitive domain name aquisition and domain name aftermarket business.

Domain Name Stock Performance in 2006

Domain Name Wire has a great review on some of the stocks that are financially driven by domain name monitization.

"Some up, some down, but enthusiasm for domain name companies remains high."

The review also points out potential issues with some Marchex's Domain Names and possible trademark issues.

DomainCash from GoDaddy

GoDaddy has just announced a program called DomainCash where, for a monthly subscription fee, they will pay up to 80% of the PPC advertising revenues that they make on the traffic to the domain.  As, Adam Viener, point's out on ReveNews, why pay for the subscription when you can get the same or better services for free on sites like TrafficClub.com

Websites: Buying and Selling

Business 2.0 recently had an article entitled "Flipping Web Fixer-Uppers - The latest rage: Buying cheap Internet sites, building tem out, and reselling them". In this article they highlighted SitePoint's Marketplace as a good place to buy and sell established sites. SitePoint charges $9.95 to list a website for sale in their forums.

I actually decided to list one of the sites as a test. Check out my listing for Save-on-Guitars-Drums-and-Music-Gear.com. Even though the site is profitable, I decided to list it for sale because it uses a datafeed from Befree which will need to be updated and I don't see myself having the time to get to this one quick enough. Also, I thought it would be good experience testing out selling a site this way. I might sell more. I also have bid on a few; there are some interesting finds in these forums.

Here is a good list of sites where you can buy and sell established web-sites:

• SitePoint's Marketplace
• GoDaddy's Aftermarket - Use Advanced Search to find domains with sites.
• Sedo - Use advanced search for websites.
• WebMasterTrades.com
• WebSiteBroker.com
• UKWebsiteForSale.co.uk
• eBay's Internet Business / Website Category - also check the following sub-categories: Dating Sites, eCommerce Sites, Entertainment Sites, Hosting Sites, Portals and Search Sites, and Other sites.

Finding a good site to acquire in these forums is like looking for a needle in the haystack, but every once in a while you can find a good one and pick it up at a decent price. With a little bid of updating, monetization work, and some paid and organic search work, you could turn a fair site into a great site and either continue earning money from it, or turn around and sell it for a profit.

GoDaddy's SuperBowl Ad Offends Women

Surprise, Surprise...  An ad the objectifies women to sell their products offends women... Hmm... who would have thought.  Comscore sent out a release reporting the brand damage or improvement from the superbowl ad.  Although they reported that 28% of women felt the ad damaged their impression of the GoDaddy brand, 12% said it actually improved their impression. 

Of course, predicatbly on the Men's side of the equation, only 9% said it damaged their impression and 35% said it improved their impression.

Of course, these figures mean nothing.  The real question for any ad is did it produce sales?  Bob Parsons points out that the ads generated significant traffic.  That's good news so long as conversion rates were good.

It's a Godaddy-Esque world we live in.  Viva la Godaddy!

SuperBowlAds.us did a good job putting up the ads from the SuperBowl.  View them here.

GoDaddy Gets Superbowl Ad Approved

Bob Parsons reports that Godaddy has finally gotten a SuperBowl ad approved.  Of course, riding the PR wave, he has made all of the rejected ads and storyboards available online.

SuperBowlAds.us does a good job of laying out the whole Saga and let's you watch all the dissaproved 2006 GoDaddy Superbowl Commercials.

Godaddy's 13th Superbowl Ad Declined

GoDaddy recently had their 13th Superbowl ad submission declined.   On his Blog, Bob Parsons says that this process hasn't been a publicity stunt and they are hoping that their 14th submission, which has already been sent, will be the one that gets approved.

They are coming down to the wire, as the last day for submission is today, January 31st. 

Publicity stunt or not, they have made the internet only version of their Godaddy Window Washer TV Commercial available on the Godaddy site.

Take a look at the uncut version of their last year's superbowl ad here:

GoDaddy's Sexy Superbowl Ads

Godaddy is stirring the pot again this year with their Superbowl Ad submissions.  According to the Godaddy Blog.  Apparently their last 10 superbowl ad submissions have been rejected by ABC.  I am sure the news of the rejections will insure that their web streaming of their ads will continue to be strong and will get their ads much more PR play and online viewability.  Another great PR move.

And as note, outrageous ads sell, but if you can get the whole world taking about ads that you don't even pay to air, and they scramble to view them on your website, that's just brilliant!

.Travel domain name to Launch

.travel will be released on a first-come, first-served basis on 1 January 2006. The domain is currently in the last pre-authentication period, during which applicants can ascertain what domains they are in a position to register from 1 January. After 1 January, businesses in the travel industry will be able to pre-authenticate themselves and apply for a .travel domain immediately afterwards instead of having to wait for the end of the pre-authentication period, as is currently the case.

Place Names (such as cities, heritage sites and national parks) are currently unavailable for registration as .travel domains. Those that have not been reserved by Tralliance, the .travel registry, by 31 December will be released for general registration to eligible entities in early January. Government Authorities will be given priority in registering such names, but other entities will be able to apply for Place Names at http://www.gtld.com, with allocation of successful applications occurring after 31 March.

The Place Names reserved list can be found at http://www.tralliance.info/PlaceNames/index.aspx. For more information on place names policy, please visit http://www.tralliance.info/pna.htm.

.XXX Domain Names

A final decision on the future of the .xxx domain, intended to denote adult content, was supposed to be made at the Vancouver ICANN meeting - however the topic was shelved from the agenda. ICANN indicated that more time was needed to review a report on .xxx by its own Governmental Advisory Committee. It is believed that the US government has played a major part in delaying the progress of this domain, after a large numbers of complaints were made to the US Chamber of Commerce when the initial approval of .xxx was announced earlier this year.