Oversee.net Co-founder & CEO Lawrence Ng just received a very high and well-deserved honor when Ernst & Young named him the 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year in the Greater Los Angeles technology category. Oversee was recently ranked as the third fastest growing private business in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal, and received the 2007 “Internet and New Media Company of the Year” Award by the Technology Council of Southern California.

Oversee owns DomainSponsor.com and also operates a marketing services business with such brands as Low.com and LowFares.com. The company also bought leading expiring domains auction house SnapNames.com a few weeks ago. Oversee was founded in 2000 by Ng and Fred Hsu when they were among the first to recognize the importance of the direct navigation business. 

I first met Lawrence at the DOMAINfest Global conference that DomainSponsor hosted last January in Hollywood, California and was immediately impressed by him, both as a brilliant businessman and as a real gentleman. I bumped into him again last week at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York City and, as always, Ng had that great smile on his face that lights 

Lawrence Ng
 Oversee.net Co-Founder & CEO
at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. last week in New York

up a room when he walks in. It is great to see someone from our industry recognized for this very prestigious award and Ernst & Young certainly could not have honored a more deserving entrepreneur. 

The Entrepreneur Of The Year^® awards program recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic and growing businesses. The program, which celebrated its 20^th anniversary in 2006, honors entrepreneurs through regional, national and global award programs in over 125 cities and 40 countries.
Posted June 30, 2007

The ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico ended today with an open board meeting in the main hall that ran for several hours. Over 1,000 people registered for the week-long meeting, the most

ever for an ICANN get-together. If you want to review the highlights from the week, ICANN introduced a nice new feature on their San Juan meeting website, a series of easy-to-read daily newsletters that summarize what happened Monday through Friday. ICANN holds three annual meetings a year at various locations around the globe. The final meeting for 2007 will be held in the organization's home town of Los Angeles October 29 - November 2. 
Posted June 29, 2007

You may have seen in our Latest News section yesterday a press release about Marchex rolling out more than 100,000 websites with local and vertical content in one fell swoop. See NewYorkDoctors.com as an example of one of these new sites. Many in this business are

watching the Marchex strategy with a great deal of interest and hoping for positive results from this public company based in Seattle. Domain owners are coming to realize that they are in a dangerous position when they have to rely almost exclusively on Google and Yahoo for monetization of their traffic (through pay per click programs). 

move at the DomainState forum, the search engines may see this as duplicate content and prevent the Marchex sites from gaining any ground in search results. 

How successful their program will be remains to be seen, but they are to be congratulated for innovating in this area and testing strategies that will unlock the full value of the prime portfolio of domains they own. A lot of large portfolio owners are rooting for them and if they succeed they will quickly become the model others in the industry will follow. 
Posted June 28, 2007

Moniker.com CEO Monte Cahn has announced the results from the Moniker/T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silent Auction that ended today. Cahn said 438 domains were sold for $1,460,780 (an average of $3,333 per sale). Added to the $10.9 million in sales done during the one-day Live Auction

Moniker.com CEO Monte Cahn
at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auction June 21

at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York June 21, that pushed the final tally to over $12.3 million, more than doubling the previous record live/silent auction total from the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Las Vegas in March. The ten biggest sales in the silent auction were: 
Supplies.com $323,530
Coed.com $88,240
Hostess.com $44,000
TruckLeasing.com $42,713
ExerciseBike.com $38,500
Wick.com $33,000
GymBags.com $29,420
Heirlooms.com $29,420
SecurityEquipment.com $29,420
RareCars.com $27,000
Posted June 27, 2007

ICANN opened the second of its three 2007 meetings yesterday in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The event will continue through Friday (June 29) with a number of key items on the agenda including improving the organization's transparency and accountability, tightening up oversight 

of registrar data to avoid another meltdown like that experienced at Registerfly.com and a progress report on IDNs (International Domain Names). Our Latest News section will have links to stories from the ICANN meeting throughout this week. A good example is an introductory report posted at TechWorld.com today. You can also follow the daily agenda and conference highlights at ICANN's official San Juan meeting website,

including audio and video from the main meeting room. 

Jay Westerdal is in San Juan and his DomainTools.com blog is also a good source of breaking news from the ICANN meeting. Jay just reported that ICANN announced that they will be lowering their fees to 20 cents per domain starting July 1st. The current rate is 22 cents and last year it was 25 cents. Of course those savings will be offset by large price hikes that Verisign will be enacting on .com and .net domains in October. 
Posted June 26, 2007

After ringing up more than $10 million in sales at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. live auction in New York Thursday (June 21), the silent auction that Moniker.com is also running in association with

the event will conclude Wednesday (June 27) at 11am (U.S. Eastern time). The results from the silent auction could push the total tally into the $12-$15 million range. You can see a final list of all of the high bids in the live auction here. If you have 

not already registered to participate in the silent auction, you can do that through this link. 
Posted June 25, 2007

I frequently write in this column about the massive migration of ad dollars from traditional media to the web. I do that for a couple of reasons. One, because that migration is the key driver in the increasing value of generic domain names and two, having come from a traditional

media background I am spellbound by this historic deflation of once all-powerful mediums like newspapers, radio and TV that I previously worked in. It is like watching the biggest train wreck in history unfold before your eyes. 

The latest sign of the times comes from our own backyard here in Tampa, Florida. Media General Inc., a company that owns the Tampa Tribune and several other major newspapers, radio and TV station around the U.S., just announced a huge revenue drop for May - down 15% (over $6 million) from the same month last year. The company said ad losses at the Tampa paper were even worse, with classified ads plummeting a breathtaking 38% in the past year. Media General President and CEO Marshall N. Morton said an economic downturn in Florida hammered results in Tampa, where the company also owns NBC affiliate WFLA-TV and TBO.com. 

We are also a Florida based media outlet, but the economy here has not effected us at all because our publication is part of one of the

hottest industries in the world - domains and the Internet. Online ad revenues have been exploding at a rate of more than 30% annually. New advertisers knock on our door every day and the only problem we face is not having enough space to accommodate all of them.  I have very fond memories of working in print, radio and TV and I am still a fan of all of those mediums - but the future clearly belongs to the Internet and I believe there is no better place for you or I to be at this pivotal point in media history.
Posted June 16, 2007

Andrew Miller and Mike "Zappy" Zapolin of Boston's Internet Real Estate Group (the subjects of a September 2005 Cover Story in DN Journal) are featured in a new article at BusinessWeek.com. I was glad to see this piece for a couple of reasons. It's good to see 

that Business Week has finally discovered domains - for the past year and a half they have been getting clobbered when it comes to covering this industry by competitors like Business 2.0 and the Wall Street Journal. Even general interest publications like USA Today and the New York Times have been beating them on one of the most important unfolding business stories of all time. Also, it's nice to see good guys like Miller and Zapolin get the kind of recognition they deserve. They have focused on acquiring and developing some 

Mike "Zappy" Zapolin (L) and Andrew Miller 
Internet Real Estate Group

of the greatest generic domains name in existence, including creditcards.com, software.com and beer.com to name just a few. The Business Week article focuses on what they are doing with their latest gem, chocolate.com. Well worth taking the time to read.
Posted June 15, 2007

The headline for a Joe Mandese article at MediaPost.com Wednesday was a real sign of the times: "Nielsen Reports Slowdown In First Quarter Ad Spending, Huge Jump In Online". Even in the midst of a severe slowdown for most forms of ad spending, online ad sales are rocketing.

No other category in the media world is even close to the web's growth rate, 31.9% over the same quarter in 2006 according to Nielsen. Consumer magazines are a distant second with a 6.5% growth rate. The worst performance was turned in by network television, down a whopping 8.5% in the past year as more consumers go online for their video fix (and advertisers follow them there). You have to wonder if these kinds of numbers will finally register on the Madison Avenue ad people who will be at the 

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference next week in New York. Someone please leave them a wake up call. The web and domains are where it's at. Is there really any doubt that those in this industry are in the right place at the right time?
Posted June 14, 2007

Moniker.com has released the list of more than 3,000 domain names that will be auctioned off in the Live and Silent Auctions during next week's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York. The top names will go under the gavel during the 3-hour live auction at the Grand Hyatt Hotel that

starts at 3pm (U.S. Eastern Time) on Thursday, June 21. The domains that will be offered for sale include such prime generic names as Auctions.com, Scotland.com, Student.com, Cats.com and HorseRacing.com, to name just a few. If you will not be at the conference, you can still sign up as an absentee bidder (for both the live and silent auctions) here. Those who will not be in New York will be able to follow the auction action live on WebmasterRadio.FM.
Posted June 13, 2007

Auctioneer Joel Langbaum and Moniker CEO 
Monte Cahn running a recent live auction.

Still another newspaper article on the domain business hit the streets Monday when the Lowell Sun (Massachusetts) ran an article by Tom Spoth about people and companies in that area who are making a name for themselves in the domain business. The article features

Waltham's NameMedia (the subject of our current Cover Story), Boston's Sedo.com and one of the top .US investors, Chris Zouzas of Chelmsford, Mass. Spoth wrote, "Traditional real estate may be in a slump right now, but in the virtual world, the market is booming. That means business is good for a unique group of real-estate speculators: those who buy up Web addresses, rather than street addresses" and Spoth added "Some Web addresses fetch prices that most homeowners would never dream of (citing the recent $9.5 million sale of 

Porn.com as an example)." The article also quoted NameMedia VP Peter Lamson as saying "The importance of having a memorable and marketable online address is only increasing." With everyday people now reading about the domain story in their local papers around the world, this already hot business may be headed for the moon this summer.
Posted June 12, 2007

The organizers of next week's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York conference at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan announced today that the Founder and former CEO of Travelocity.com, Terry Jones, will deliver the keynote speech Tuesday night (June 19). Jones started 

Travelocity.com as a department inside the multi billion dollar Sabre Corporation. His ten-man team grew the department into a $3 billion public company with over 35 million members and 1,200 employees. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. had also been talking with 

Steve Forbes about keynoting for the New York conference but he will be out of the country next week. The good news is that Forbes has agreed to deliver the keynote speech at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East conference October 10 in Hollywood, Florida. 
Posted June 11, 2007

You know domains are reaching critical mass now that stories about the business are exploding in mainstream media like popcorn in a hot skillet. The latest one today from Canada's 

National Post focuses on one of the world's hotbeds of domaining - British Columbia and its biggest city, Vancouver. Writer Nathan Vanderklippe talks with and about well known domain pioneers who hail from the area like Gary Chernoff, Kevin Ham, Dan Cera and Frank Schilling (now a resident of the Cayman Islands). There are many more big-time domain investors in BC and throughout Canada. Chernoff jokingly opined that maybe it is because the longer winter keeps them indoors (and 

presumably in front of their computers) more. Whatever the reason, Canada is certainly a  global leader in the space and has produced a remarkable number of this industry's luminaries. 
Posted June 9, 2007

Michael Collins is coming out of "retirement" to become the new Executive Director of the Internet Commerce Association. I wasn't going to write about this yet because it will be a few more weeks before Michael will be on the job full-time, but Jay Westerdal just put the word out on his DomainTools.com blog and his information is correct. I posted May 8th that

Michael had just left NameMedia (the company that purchased Afternic.com, the domain aftermarket sales site that Michael and his brother Roger had built into an industry force over the past four years). He had decided to change careers and purchased a long-standing automotive retail business in the Orlando area. 

That same week the ICA had begun a search for a new Executive Director and the non-profit organization's board members were asked if they knew of any suitable candidates. Having known Michael and his wife Janet for several years I knew he was a person of very high integrity who was also a great listener and consensus builder. I felt he would be perfect for the job of bringing domain owners together and upon recommending him to the board was asked to contact him to gauge his interest. 

Michael Collins
New Executive Director for the
Internet Commerce Association (ICA)

Michael was just closing on his new business when I called but I asked if there was any way he could still play a role in this industry where he is so well regarded. He thought about it for a few days and decided that if the ICA could give him enough time to line up a manager for his new retail enterprise and make sure it was functioning properly before he came onboard at ICA he would accept. The ICA board was happy to do that and Michael is now getting up to speed on ICA issues in preparation for taking over the ED role full-time. He will represent the organization at this month's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York as well as at the upcoming ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico. I think his 30-day break from the domain world was long enough and we will all benefit from his return.
Posted June 8, 2007

LeaseThis.com, a pioneering domain leasing company that we profiled in January, has been busy the past couple of weeks. The Los Angeles based company unveiled a revamped website May 21, passed the 500,000 mark in domains listed June 4 and also announced the official global launch of their platform on Monday. LeaseThis.com directly connects advertisers

with the domain owner. Prior to the introduction of the leasing model, businesses seldom had access to a top tier domain name unless they purchased it, something that can be an extremely expensive proposition. Now advertisers can lease a domain name for a specified time period, with the option to purchase it after the lease has expired. Leasing

also eliminates the click fraud issue since advertisers are able to pay a flat fee each month for use of the domain. RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan said “In my view, domainers currently monetizing exclusively through pay-per-click (PPC) providers should actively pursue trials of alternative monetization platforms such as LeaseThis.com.” Domain owners are welcome to contact the company if they would like to list domains they have available for lease.
Posted June 7, 2007

Verisign has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief and it is packed with good news about the ongoing phenomenal growth in domain registrations. 10.7 million  

new domain registrations were made worldwide in the first quarter of 2007, a new record for a single quarter. There are now 128 million domain registrations on the books. The total number of active registrations for all global TLDs jumped 31% from the same quarter last year while the number of country code domains 

(ccTLDs) shot up by 33%. If you look only at new registrations, ccTLDs were up a remarkable 86% against the same quarter last year. That's what you call clicking on all cylinders.
Posted June 6, 2007

It looks like domain owners who use PPC services that receive their ad feed from Yahoo! may soon see a revenue dip. The Yahoo! Publisher Network sent an email to their clients last night advising them that "Yahoo! will be introducing a new traffic quality feature called "quality-based pricing". This feature is rolling out beginning today and we plan to continue to expand it over time. Quality-based pricing will give us the ability to price traffic commensurate with the

 value that advertisers receive from each traffic source. We recognize that this approach may have an impact on how you operate your business, and as a valued Yahoo! publisher we wanted to let you know about this new feature, as you may notice fluctuations in your Yahoo! Publisher Network earnings." That is usually shorthand for "expect your earnings to drop".

RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan warned this was coming in a research report on Marchex, Inc. (who uses a Yahoo! feed) that he released yesterday. Rohan said the changes at Yahoo! could result in domain owners seeing as much as a 20% drop in their earnings. It is too early to know how indvidual accounts will be affected but it is something you will definitely want to keep an eye on.
Posted June 5, 2007

Two years ago almost no one outside of this business was aware that it even existed. Today it seems like stories about domains are popping up every week in major newspapers around the globe or national business magazines. The latest example is a comprehensive piece on the boom in the domain market by Dan Skeen that was just published in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald. The article features Fabulous.com's

Dan Warner, who is frequently seen in DN Journal (see his latest piece on our home page about the factors that influence the aftermarket value of domain names). 

Skeen wrote "Dan Warner, chief strategy officer at Brisbane-based Dark Blue Sea Limited, is used to watching multimillion-dollar sales of domains such as Diamond.com and Vodka.com take the headlines. His story of a slow and steady accumulation of domains, bought for less than $7 and sold for thousands, day in and day out for several years, lacks get-rich-quick appeal. Yet this measured approach to domain accumulation has grown a $5 million (Australian) initial investment into a company with a market cap of $68 million.

Dan Warner 
Fabulous.com

His company holds the world's second-largest portfolio of domain names, with more than 550,000. NameMedia Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts, has about 725,000. (Editor's Note: Name Media will be featured in our upcoming June Cover Story). Together, these two companies hold more than 1% of the world's domains. Mr Warner recalls that just two years ago only 18 or 19 companies had more than 10,000 domains; today he estimates that 50 companies have portfolios of more than that size. "Everyone's been buying like mad" he says."
Posted June 4, 2007

The official press release on the purchase of SnapNames.com by Oversee.net that we reported last night went out this morning. Sudhir Bhagwan, the Chairman of the Board and CEO at SnapNames, said “This transaction is a combination of two industry leaders with outstanding reputations for serving domain name customers at all levels. Our customers, partners and employees will benefit from this alignment with a leader in domain services. Having access to Oversee’s strong customer base, technology platform and financial resources will be of great value to us.”  Bhagwan and SnapNames’s senior management will continue to run the company and its headquarters will remain in Portland, Oregon .

Lawrence Ng, Co-Founder and CEO of Oversee, said "SnapNames is a great company and we are delighted that they are becoming part of the Oversee family. SnapNames’s established position as a leader in the secondary market for domains is an important enhancement to Oversee’s capabilities in domain services. We believe that this acquisition will enhance the services we provide to the domain-owner community, supporting the entire life cycle of domain name procurement, monetization and sales.” 

The price Oversee paid was not revealed but estimates have ranged from $25-$50 million. SnapNames was formed in 2000 to provide the first commercially available technology for pre-ordering a currently registered domain name. About 25% of currently registered domain names—now more than 120 million worldwide—expire and become available each year.  SnapNames estimates that more than 10 million of those names will be offered through its platform in 2007 alone. 

SnapNames CEO Sudhir Bhagwan

Oversee CEO Lawrence Ng

Some have expressed concern that Oversee will now have an unfair advantage in competing for high quality domains in SnapNames auctions, however an insider at SnapNames said Oversee would not bid on names ordered by SnapNames customers. That is in line with the company's current policy that prohibits the company or its employees from participating in SnapNames auctions.  
Posted June 1, 2007