Expired Domains

I found a pretty cool game that is a virtual stock market based on alexa ranking.

Players compete for fame and glory by buying and selling shares in sites on the world wide web. The price of a share is set at the the site’s daily reach per million, according to alexa.com. You get $10,000 just for signing up.

Players also recieve $1,000 per referral. It’s all imaginary money but it is pretty fun to try to predict which sites will rise and fall in alexa ranking.

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Internet domain name and expired traffic speculators have always been a small group of people, that understood the value of targeted traffic, and saw the future values of internet property. But today as we look at the news on the web and even business magazines such as The Wall Street Journal and Business 2.0 many domainers are shocked to see the mainstream coverage already beginning to creep into our secret world. We have all known that it would eventually start to happen, and like squirrels stockpiling nuts before winter, domainers have been trying to cushion their stockpile before the big storm.

With sales like the ones listed below, keeping the lid on this secret is becoming harder and harder, and soon will no longer be secret information.

InterSearch has entered into an $11.150 million agreement including both cash and stock with DotCom Corp. of Cary, North Carolina, to acquire a portfolio of tax-related domains, and signed a deal with Look on the Web of Ontario, Canada, to lease, with the option to buy, the domain look.com.

Mathematics.com sold for $135,000

Bills.com domain name and trademark sold for $964,500

$1 million sale of Fish.com

This is but a teaser of what’s to come. In the near future you’ll notice additional press coverage and the resultant “outing” of an entire industry that has traditionally remained a pretty private club of Traffic Monetizers, Public Companies, Speculators, and even Institutional Investors.

“The Fish.com transaction underscores the value of owning a mission-critical domain name,” said Afternic President Roger Collins. “There is no question that premium names help businesses establish the impression of brand leadership and allow them to become more effective Internet marketers.”

The next steps? Well this private club will now start to expand, there will be additional interest, media, and buzz surrounding these deals as more and more of them are publicized.

“The fact that it is moving from individuals to larger corporations … represents a legitimization of the domain-name industry.” said Matt Bentley, chief executive of domain broker Sedo.com LLC.

Are you ready for the secret to be unveiled?

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I have received numerous emails regarding not having any recent updates to my blog. I would like to apologize for the delay and give a brief explanation as to why it has taken me so long to update the site.

As many of you are aware, I lived in slidell Louisiana until August 29th 2005. Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of the city of slidell, which is about 30 miles east of New Orleans. Fortunately my home survived with minimal damage. Over the last 3 months I have been in the process of relocating my family and business to Richmond Texas. I have almost completed the move, and should be updating the site more frequently.

I apologize for the delay.

P.S. Big thanks to Marc Ostrofsky, Bob and Paige Martin, Scott Ross, and all of the Internet Reit Staff, family and friends for helping my entire family find housing, get situated, and feel comfortable in our new environment. Also thanks to Brian Null, Scott Null and all the fine people in St Louis Missouri for assisting me in delivering much needed supplies to slidell (BTW Scott and Brian drove 17 hours straight to deliver these supplies). Thanks Again to all for your assistance in a time of need.

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As if website owners didn’t have enough to deal with, SEO (search engine optimization), staying up on which search engines are using which formulas, what’s working and not working, browser friendly sites that cater to each and all browsers, and much more. Website owners should now prepare for m-commerce.

Retail web sites that cater to technologically hip and sophisticated shoppers should consider preparing the sites for the first wave of shopping from cell phones and other mobile devices, warns David Jilk, CEO of Xaffire Inc., a provider of web site performance monitoring technology. “This Christmas could be the year that people start to buy their gifts on mobile devices,� he tells InternetRetailer.com. “If a retailer’s brand is one of being hip, it may want to begin to support m-commerce, because if it succeeds this Christmas, their mobile shoppers will be back,� he says.

A growing number of young consumers are using cell phones like the Sidekick II from T-Mobile U.S.A. Inc., while technologically savvy older consumers are brandishing Blackberry mobile devices, and each group has the capability to shop online from their handhelds more easily than ever before.

“Sites need to conform to mobile usage, because a mobile device user may have to work hard to find information fields,� Jilk says. Most web sites are not designed to work well with mobile devices. Website owners need to work on making their sites more friendly to smaller display screens and other limited web-browsing capabilities.

Retailers will want to provide lightweight versions of their web sites, with briefer product descriptions and possibly lighter images, for handheld users, says John Rozen, chief operating officer of Mirror Image Internet Inc., a provider of content delivery solutions for online merchants. “Shopping on portable devices is coming—it’s a year and a half away at the most,� Rozen says.

Other options, Jilk says, are to reduce the number of pages in the navigation and checkout process for mobile device users and to let m-commerce shoppers place items in a shopping cart and finish the purchase when they get to a conventional computer.

“I wouldn’t suggest retailers put a major investment this year into making lightweight sites for this Christmas, but if they cater to high-tech shoppers, lightweight features could produce a valuable image,� Jilk says.

Expired Domains

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Microsoft Corp.’s MSN showed a higher gain in U.S. search queries in July than its top rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., but it’s too soon to say whether the third-place portal is catching up, a Web metrics firm said Friday.

The number of queries on MSN rose 30 percent over the same month last year to 744 million, ComScore Networks said. The total volume of online searches year-to-year increased 23 percent to more than 4.8 billion.

“It definitely shows some progress,” ComScore researcher James Lamberti said. “It’s remarkable that Microsoft has managed to hold its own and make slight gains during a year where there’s been a significant amount of focus on search (by all the portals).”

Nevertheless, rivals Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves also grew in number of searches in July at a pace higher than the overall market. Google and Yahoo showed a 27 percent year-to-year increase to 1.8 million and 1.5 million searches, respectively. Ask Jeeves saw a 26 percent increase to 293,000.

In terms of market share, however, MSN had less than half of search leader Google, which accounted for 36.5 percent of all online searches in the United States in July. Yahoo came in second with a 30.5 percent share.

What’s uncertain is whether MSN has made sustainable progress against its competitors, Lamberti said. The search engine’s growth could be attributed to having a smaller user base and the seasonality of search.

Having a smaller base means MSN can add fewer searches overall, but the percentage in terms of growth would be higher. In addition, the summer months are traditionally slow for search, because people are on vacation and students are off for the summer.

“The slower seasonal months tend to impact Google more than the other players, because they have such a large base of users,” Lamberti said.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., also embarked on a MSN marketing blitz in February and March that has helped it maintain its current market share and make slight gains over Google and Yahoo, Lamberti said.

The test, however, will be in the peak months of September through October, and January through April, Lamberti said. MSN would have to continue to show real gains during those months to show its taking searchers away from competitors.

“The (overall) market is growing so much that it’s tough to see the impact from true performance,” Lamberti said. “It’ll be interesting to see if MSN can maintain its improved position as we enter the heavier search months.”

While Google was the top search-getter, Yahoo led the market in toolbar usage, ComScore said. The portal’s browser add-in served as the starting point for 51 percent of all toolbar searches in July, or 282 million searches. That number is 74 percent higher than a year ago.

Toolbar use is significant because the application provides a gateway to a portal, without the user actually having to go directly to the site.

Overall, 11 percent of U.S. online searches were conducted via toolbars, up from 8 percent a year ago.

“Yahoo has done an extremely good job of marketing its toolbar to its user base,” Lamberti said.

And that base is sizable. Some portion of the Sunnyvale, Calif., portal’s network is used by 70 percent of online consumers in the United States.

“They’ve really taken advantage of the portal lock in that they have,” Lamberti said. “That’s always going to be an advantage for them in the market, as long as they maintain that massive reach.”

Among the other leading search engines, America Online Inc., owned by Time Warner Inc., had a 9.9 percent market share; Ask Jeeves, recently bought by IAC/InterActiveCorp, had a 6.1 percent share; InfoSpace Network, 0.9 percent; and all others 0.6 percent.

As a whole, the six largest search engines accounted for 99.4 percent of all online searches in July, up from 98.5 percent a year ago.

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