We have several interesting items to close the week with. For starters, .CLUB has become the first new gTLD to hit 100,000 registrations made by registrants who actually paid for their domains (a couple of others crossed 100K earlier by giving away a massive number of domains, most of those being .xyz domains stuffed into accounts of Network Solutions customers who didn't ask for them).

.CLUB CEO Colin Campbell said, "We've seen an increase in not only entirely new businesses springing up specifically around the .CLUB domain, such as shaving.club, but also from companies that are creating micro sites within their larger sites as a private, members-only address that offers additional benefits and privileges for 'club' insiders. We believe we have sold more than any other new domain because the word CLUB is so meaningful, and has recognition all over the world. It is easy to remember and allows for a great, catchy domain name."

	In the face of continually shrinking payouts the PPC arena continues to see consolidation and some players leaving the field entirely. Many Hitfarm customers were surprised to receive an email from the company this morning announcing that they will cease operations October 1, 2014.

Hitfarm is one of the oldest players in space and one of the most well-known with its leadership including one of the most successful domain investors of all time, Kevin Ham, and his brother Don. The farewell email said, "At this time we want to thank you for your past business and tell you how much we have appreciated having you as a client. We wish you continued success"

We got word of a BIG .ca sale today - one of the biggest ever for a two-word domain in the Canadian ccTLD. iREx.ca has sold UsedCars.ca to the Edmonton-based Mike Priestner Automotive Group for a cool CAD $126,000  (USD $115,920 at today's exchange rate - price
includes $6,000 GST).  The buyer paid iREx.ca another CAD $42,000 ($38,649 USD with price  including $2,000 GST) to add Trucks.ca to their collection.
Congratulations to Wayne Haroutunian at iREx on the sales and to the Priestner Automotive Group on acquiring those two category killing domains. It would appear to be a win win situation for both iREx and an end user that is perfectly positioned to utilize those domains in a way that should allow them to make their money back many times over. Adam Strong Last, but certainly not least, kudos to Donna Mahony for coaxing veteran domain investor Adam Strong into the spotlight for a very nice profile published on her blog. Adam, one of the industry's true good guys, has never been one to seek attention or talk about himself, so those who don't know him may not be aware of just how successful he has been and how highly regarded he is among his peers (just one indicator of that is Adam being one of the nominees for T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s 2014 Domainer of the Year Award). In the kind of self-effacing fashion you would  expect from the humble Midwesterner, Adam told Donna, "All in all, I’ve faired pretty well in this business. I’ve made a lot of mistakes...That should be the focus really. Making mistakes and fixing them and moving forward having learned from those mistakes."

Before signing off today we also want to wish our U.S. readers a Happy Labor Day weekend. Most American business will be closed Monday (September 1) as Americans celebrate a holiday that serves as the unofficial end of summer, complete with cookouts or trips to the beach for many. Have a great break and we'll be back with you next week!

When the new gTLDs began arriving in the first half of this year a lot of people predicted that the new competition would hurt the original non .com gTLDs, .net and .org (and others like .info and .biz that arrived later) more than .com, which remains the gold standard. So, it was interesting to see that 

the Public Interest Registry, who administers the .org extension, reported continued growth in their latest semi-annual Dashboard report that was released Wednesday.

The report said .org  finished 2Q-2014 with 10,428,027 global registrations, a 1.4% increase over the past 12 months. That is certainly not meteoric growth but in the face of so much new competition (several hundred new gTLDs have already been released) it is still respectable. Of course, there are hundreds more new gTLDs coming (including a couple PIR will operate themselves, .NGO and .ONG, alongside three IDNs they have already introduced) and the public will presumably become more familiar with new gTLDs in general - so maintaining growth isn't going to get any easier for traditional TLDs. 

The 2014 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Awards will be handed out at the pioneering domain conference's 10th anniversary show coming up October 30-November 2 at the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach. Today show co-founders Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu announced the nominees in 11 categories. 64 different people or businesses advanced to the final vote (some were nominated in multiple categories).

To get on the ballot, Each person or business entity had to be nominated by at least three different people during the industry wide call for nominations that was held last week. While that stage of the process was 

open to all, voting for the award winners is not. To cast a ballot you must be the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. mailing list. If you did not get a ballot via email today you are not on the list. However, all you to do to get on it and vote for your favorite is to send a Subscribe email to  [email protected] no later than Friday, September 12.

Escrow.com will be counting and certifying all votes cast. Voting dates and specific rules will be announced soon with voting to be conduced over a two-day period.

Here are the final nominees for the 2014 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Awards:

DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Michael Cyger, Adam Dicker, Alan Dunn, Morgan Linton, David Roth, Tia Wood. 

BROKER OF THE YEAR

Ryan Colby, Mark Daniel, Domain Guardians, Dave Evanson, Tracy Fogarty, Alan Hack, George Hong, Andrew Rosener, Amanda Waltz

BLOGGER OF THE YEAR

Andrew Alleman, Michael Berkens, Shane Cultra, Michael Cyger, DomainerIncome, Ron Jackson, Elliot Silver

MOST PROMISING NEW gTLD

.CLUB, Dot Chinese Online, .EMAIL, .GURU, .LINK, .NYC, .WEB, .XYZ 

BEST MARKETING OF NEW gTLD

.CLUB, Donuts, TLD Marketing, .XYZ 

BEST OVERALL DOMAIN SOLUTION

Bidtellect, DomainHoldings, DomainNameSales.com, Escrow.com*, GoDaddy.com, IPNeighborhood.com, ParkLogic.com, RookMedia.net, Uniregistry 

*Update for the categories above and below: Escrow.com has withdrawn their name from consideration. In a note to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. company President Brandon Abbey said, “As a previous winner, Escrow.com is very honored to have been nominated in multiple categories for the 2014 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Awards.  However, as the keeper of the ballots we need to be completely transparent and impartial.  It would be inappropriate for us to be eligible to win this award.  Thanks to all for your continued trust and support.”

SPONSOR OF THE YEAR

Above.com, .CLUB, Escrow.com*, EscrowHill.com, Guta.com, InternetTraffic.com, NamesCon, RookMedia.net, TrafficZ.com, Uniregistry 

DOMAINER OF THE YEAR

Adam Dicker, Michael Gilmour, Simon Johnson, Ilze Kaulins-Plazkacs, Rick Schwartz (declined), Adam Strong 

DOMAINER OF THE DECADE

Frank Schilling 

BANDIT BERKENS GOODWILL AMBASSADOR 

Michael Castello, Michael Cyger, Adam Dicker, Michael Gilmour, Ron Jackson, Vern Jurovich, Richard Lau, Gregg McNair, Barbara Neu 

DOMAIN HALL OF FAME

John Berryhill, Gary Chernoff, Michael Cyger, Alan Dunn, John Ferber, Michael Gilmour, Rob Grant, Simon Johnson, Ilze Kaulins-Plazkacs,  Ammar Kubba, Roy Messer (The top two vote getters will be inducted).

(Posted August 27, 2014) To refer others to the post above only you can use this URL: http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2014/dailyposts/20140827.htm

Back in June I told you about an exciting development in India when the organizers of DomainX announced they would hold the country's first major conference devoted solely to domain names. That event, staged by the Domain Name Owners Association of India (DNOAI), will be held on Sunday, September 7 at the Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre in Hyderabad.

A lot has happened since that story came out. There was apparently a split among those planning the original show, resulting in a fracture that couldn't be healed. As a result, a second group with a similar name - the Indian Domain Owners Association (IDOA) - will stage their own 

India keyboard image from Bigstock 

show called World Domain Day on Sunday (August 24) at the Avasa Hotel, also in Hyderabad, two weeks before DomainX.

This is obviously not an ideal situation for either group but to their credit they have concentrated on on getting their own projects together rather that wasting time, energy and good will publicly bashing each other. So, now it will be up to the market to pick a winner. Both one-day events have a good line up of speakers, sponsors and a full agenda and there is bound to be a lot of pent up conference demand in India, a great market with a lot of very active and intelligent domain investors, so perhaps both can succeed with their debut shows despite their close proximity in both time and place. 

	At the World Domain Day website you can get all of the details on the speakers who will be featured Sunday, as well as the sponsors and agenda details. The show is scheduled to run from 9:30am to 6:00pm local time. I'll have more details on the DomainX conference when we get closer to that event on September 7.

As I mentioned in the June story I will be speaking at DomainX. At the time I had planned to travel to Hyderabad to speak in person but due to some huge problems in getting Indian visas that exploded  this summer when a new company took over (and apparently thoroughly botched up)
visa processing, I will not be making the trip but will speak via Skype instead. As of this writing, some other U.S. based speakers, despite the many reports of interminable delays and lost or stolen passports, were still trying to get visas so they can make it in person and I am hopeful they will beat the odds and get their visas. Given this unexpectedly chaotic situation I'm thankful for Skype, but will regret missing this initial opportunity to meet so many of our Indian friends in person.

DomainNameSales.com had a blowout 2nd quarter that included one sale over $2 million and another above $1 million. Unfortunately, Vive President of Sales Jeff Gabriel couldn't tell me what those names were due to non disclosure agreements, but he was able to share seven other sales that broke the six-figure barrier (Gabriel said DNS had more than $5 million in sales that were subject to NDAs). 

In the most recent quarter DomainNameSales banked $500,000 for Mobile.net and $375,000 for Symphony.com (both of which we have already reported and charted). In addition they sold five others being reported for the first time (names that we will chart in our next weekly report). Those are: Aura.com at $175,000, 99.net at $150,000, Munch.com at $140,000, Vapers.com at $132,470 and Peepers.com at $105,000.

DNS's list of reportable 2Q sales included almost 800 domains that went for four or more figures. Their top 25 sales alone totaled more than $2.5 million (again a figure that does not include their two seven-figure NDA sales).

All of this is good news as it comes a day after our latest weekly report reflected what appeared to be a quiet week in the aftermarket. When the DNS sales are added to our charts in next week's report, that slow week will be followed by one of the year's strongest. Even more so because this evening we were able to confirm that the Check.com sale we told you  

Jeff Gabriel
Vice President of Sales
DomainNameSales.com

about this week was for an even $1 million. Nailing down the exact number (thanks to research by George Kirikos) will allow us to chart it next week. 

In the meantime, here are sales of $20,000 or more at DomainNameSales.com that Jeff was able to share with us :

mobile.net $500,000 symphony.com $375,000 aura.com $175,000 99.net $150,000 munch.com $140,000 vapers.com $132,470 peepers.com $105,000 safetytraining.com $80,000 truckdrivingjobs.com $80,000 mitv.com $75,000 brandnames.com $65,000 futr.com $58,800 goodadvice.com $58,000 storageboxes.com $58,000 mewe.com $55,800 Marruecos.com $55,000 asou.com $52,500 dirtypanties.com $50,000 avenir.com $45,000 eversafe.com $45,000 twocents.com $45,000 zyme.com $43,000 rocketspace.com $40,000 taillights.com $39,200 ridesharing.org $39,000 noosphere.com $37,000 floridarehab.com $36,000 jiko.com $35,000 mesotheliomaprognosis.com $35,000 ride.org $35,000 smoothierecipes.com $35,000 usdg.com $35,000

stateoftheinternet.com $33,000 directhealth.com $32,500 vehiclehistoryreport.com $31,000 imirror.com $30,000 myworkout.com $30,000 nona.com $30,000 aquaclean.com $28,890 expertadvisor.com $28,000 humm.com $28,000 assertive.com $27,500 assertiveness.com $27,500 compounding.com $25,000 hace.com $25,000 modernize.com $25,000 roundtown.com $25,000 cashforguns.com $24,191 brandshop.com $22,000 calysta.com $22,000 icoil.com $22,000 shlx.com $22,000 outbuildings.com $21,000 eztags.com $20,500 biye.com $20,000 callguard.com $20,000 club88.com $20,000 exex.com $20,000 gokey.com $20,000 oceansiderealestate.com $20,000 sched.com $20,000 tourister.com $20,000 worksearch.com $20,000 zyou.com $20,000

(Posted August 21, 2014) To refer others to the post above only you can use this URL: http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2014/dailyposts/20140821.htm

The 10th anniversary edition of the pioneering T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain conference will be held at the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami's South Beach October 30 - November 2, 2014 and for the 10th straight year the annual T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Awards recognizing industry excellence will be handed out. 

Nominations for this year's awards in 10 categories opened today and will remain open until 6pm U.S. Eastern time Friday (August 22). To be eligible for the final ballot a company or individual must receive at least three nominations. Nominations can be emailed to [email protected] (each nomination must come from a different voter).

Once the nominees are chosen final balloting is scheduled to open in mid-September with a third party, Escrow.com, taking over the counting of the vote for the the first time.

If the award trophies remain the ones T.R.A.F.F.I.C. has been presenting in recent years, winners will receive an impressive crystal clear two-piece award carved from heavy lucite. The awards are 9" tall with a base that is 7" wide and 3" deep. A one-inch thick pedestal, engraved with the winner's name, supports a free-standing world globe that is about the size of a baseball (one of last year's awards is seen in the photo at right). 

The winners will be named and presented with their awards at the conference on Saturday, November 1.

Below is a nomination ballot that also notes some of the previous winners. You can nominate one person or company in each category. There are two new categories this year - Most Promising New gTLD and Best Marketing By a New gTLD.  

The AWARDS are: 

DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR  (Previous winners = Kevin Ham, Shawn Pilfold, Rob Grant, Alan Dunne, Michael Cyger) 

I nominate ________________________________________ 

DOMAIN BROKER OF THE YEAR  (Previous winners = Dave Evanson, Negar Hajikhani.) 

I nominate _______________________________________ 

DOMAINER OF THE YEAR  (Previous Winners = Kevin Ham, Michael Berkens, Frank Schilling) 

I nominate ____________________________________ 

BEST DOMAIN BLOG   (Previous Winners = Ron Jackson: DNJournal, Michael Berkens: TheDomains.com, Elliot Silver: ElliotsBlog.com, Michael Cyger: DomainSherpa.com) 

I nominate _______________________________________ 

MOST PROMISING NEW gTLD 

I nominate ___________________________________________ 

BEST MARKETING BY A NEW gTLD 

I nominate __________________________________________ 

SPONSOR OF THE YEAR  (Previous Winners = TrafficZ, Parked.com, InternetTraffic.com, Escrow.com, Go Daddy)

I nominate ____________________________________ 

BEST OVERALL DOMAIN SOLUTION (this includes Revenues, Sales, Development, etc. Previous Winners = Google.com, Moniker.com, Fabulous.com, Sedo.com) 

I nominate ___________________________________________ 

BANDIT BERKENS GOODWILL AMBASSADOR  (Previous Winners - Michael and Judi Berkens, Gregg McNair) 

I nominate _____________________________________ 

DOMAIN HALL OF FAME (two people are inducted each year, but only nominate one) 

(The following have already been inducted to the DOMAIN HALL OF FAME: Monte Cahn, Rick Schwartz, Ron Jackson, Michael Berkens, David Castello, Michael Castello, Frank Schilling, Dr. Chris Hartnett, Yun Ye, Scott Day, Rick Latona, Sahar Sarid, Howard Neu, Adam Dicker, Michael Mann, Chad Folkening, Jeff Gabriel, Igal Lichtman)

I nominate _____________________________________

With baseball season winding down several big name free agents will be hitting the market this fall. However, if you run a domain company that could use a new power hitter, one is available now!

No one could have expected widely known 10-year industry veteran account executive Susan Lawrence to pop up on the job market overnight but it just happened under some most unusual circumstances. After more than six years at DomainSponsor, two at Above.com and the last two at Nami Media (not to be confused with NameMedia), not only did Susan's job disappear, so did the entire company!

At the end of last week, Nami Media's parent company, Lin Media, abruptly decided to shut down Nami with no advance notice (or severance pay) for their employees. So, 

Susan Lawrence (center) during her six-year stint with DomainSponsor (photo taken at the 2007 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East conference in Hollywood, Florida by Barbara Neu). With Susan are Laura Mitchell (left) and Rob McClinton (right).

Susan, who served as a Senior Account Manager, will soon be drumming up business for someone else. Lin's loss and possibly your gain!

Susan is a Los Angeles native and would like to join a company with an office there (or an opportunity to work remotely from the City of Angels). She can be contacted through Linked In - http://goo.gl/nhLN4I (where you can also see her complete - and quite impressive - resume. You might want to act quickly as all-stars don't stay on the market for long! 

Several upcoming events to tell you about today. In 2011 DNForum.com owner and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Hall of Famer Adam Dicker launched a free "domain college" at DNFCollege.com where he has been sharing his extensive domain investing and ecommerce expertise with the approximately 3,000 registrants that have been accepted to date. 

On Monday (August 18, 2014) Dicker is opening the latest term in his comprehensive course. Details went out in a letter to DNForum members this morning as well as on the DNFCollege group page on Facebook. Dicker has been sharing his insight in popular sessions at the major domain conferences in recent years but DNFCollege makes it possible for a broader audience to get his tips and advice. 

Adam Dicker

In his email Dicker listed 20 initial topics he planned to cover (with more to be added in the course of this latest term):

1) How to buy the right domains that you can resell. 2) How to Sell. 3) How to email a prospect and what to say. 4) How to build lead gen revenue for you or your clients. 5) What to read to help you get more knowledgeable fast. 6) How to buy a domain for $10 and sell it in less than a week for $1000-5000. 7) How to setup your portfolio so its easy for you to manage. 8) What tools should you have. 9) What templates and plugins should you be using for your sites. 10) Who you should listen to and who you should avoid to be successful.

11) How not to fall in love with your domains. 12) Know when to let go. 13) Time management. 14) How to build your own sites. 15) How to rank your sites fast. 16) How to get videos ranked quickly. 17) What social networks you need to be on and the ones you don't. 18) How to monitor future tends to make a killing! 19) Whatever else you want to hear about! Add to this post! 20) Most important, I will teach you how to build businesses that you can earn monthly revenue with and not just one time.

Michael Gilmour	Another well-known industry figure, ParkLogic.com Founder Michael Gilmour, will host a free webinar Thursday (August 21, 2014) starting at 4pm U.S. Pacific time (7pm U.S. Eastern). If you read Michael's blog - WhizzbangsBlog.com - you know that he just finished authoring and posting a five-part series on "establishing a domain industry association for everyone." The ideas he has laid out in his series will be the jumping off point for Thursday's webinar. Gilmour said he is does not intend to start a new association. His goal is to further a discussion about what the focus of an industry association should be, as well as how it should be funded and structured to encourage the widest possible participation. There are currently two industry associations in place, the Internet Commerce Association
that is focused on the rights and interests of domain registrants and the newer Domain Name Association whose members include many corporate entities and registry operators, with a focus on "the growth  and development of the domain name industry" at large.

We also want to relay some news  about the 2014 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East conference coming up October 30 - November 2 at a new venue - the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami's South Beach. In an interview with Michael Berkens at TheDomains.com, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Co-Founder Rick Schwartz said there will be some big changes in the voting procedure for the annual T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Awards that will be handed out at that show. For the first time a third party,  Escrow.com, had been chosen to oversee the voting and count the ballots cast. In another change, a person or company will have to receive
at least three nominations to be placed on the final ballot (in the past only one was needed). Schwartz told Berkens nominations will open Tuesday (August 19) and remain open through Friday (August 22).  Final voting for those nominated is to begin in mid-September.

At the conclusion of the interview Schwartz dropped a bit of a bombshell, saying “If all works out, this will be the last TRAFFIC show I will personally produce. 10 years is long enough and I will release more info about that as we get closer to the show.”

If Rick does step away from his production duties (the show agenda has been his primary responsibility), I would expect to see his fellow T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Co-Founder Howard Neu and his wife Barbara continuing to carry the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. banner forward, with some additional help to craft the agenda brought in if needed. In any case, as its 10th anniversary show, the upcoming T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference will be a historic one.

ArcheoDomains announced the launch of a revamped blog today with a new focus on helping new businesses navigate how to build their brands online. Archeo’s Chief Operating Officer, Rod Diefendorf said, "“Acquiring the right domain is the first and most crucial step in creating a meaningful brand."

Archeo, who manages and offers for sale a premium portfolio of more than 200,000 domain names (previously held under the Marchex banner) also issued their Q2-2014 newsletter today - a publication that also offered a new focus with this issue. The newsletter's introduction says, "In our Q1 Newsletter we featured a breakout of the Archeo domains portfolio by various attributes, such as category (Health, Business, Travel) and class (1-word, 2-word, etc). In this edition of our newsletter we are diving into one of those attributes. We are focusing on our US related “GEO/LOCAL” domains and how these domains can help businesses. We've also included some fun sales information about the GEO/LOCAL domains that we have sold since launching Archeo."

As one of the world's largest portfolio holders, you will in find a lot of useful information on sales and market trends in the Archeo newsletters. 

Verisign released their Q1 2014 Domain Name Industry Brief today, a report that said 5 million domain names were added to the Internet in the opening quarter of this year. That brings the total number of registered domain names (across all extensions) to a total of 276 million worldwide. 

Compared to where things stood at the end of the same quarter a year ago (Q1-2013),   registrations have grown by 19.3 million (7.5%). Verisign said the largest top-level domains in order by zone size were:

Verisign said .com, by far the world's most popular extension, accounted for 113.2 million of the registered names. Verisign administers the .com TLD as well as 4th-ranked .net that had 15.2 million names registered at the end of Q1. 

Verisign also noted that 198 new gTLDs were available for registration during 1Q-2014 but they totaled just 405,091 registrations, barely one fourth of 1% (.027) of total gTLD registrations. Of course, 1Q-2014 was also the first quarter that any new gTLDs were available, so we will learn a lot more about how they are being adopted in the quarters to come.

With many of these domain name registrations representing more businesses coming online, Verisign said there is an increased concern over domain name security. The brief’s featured article, The Domain Threat Landscape: Protecting Critical Infrastructure Requires a Layered Security Approach, provides a brief summary of domain name hijacking and some preventative measures and tools to help ensure the security of a domain name. You can download the full brief from this page: www.VerisignInc.com/DNIB.

OK, so maybe Charlotte Gilbert doesn't own the entire web, but the uncommonly bright and personable domain industry veteran has just staked out a special corner of it with her new blog - DomainQueen.com - that launched today. Yep, there are already plenty of domain blogs around but you can bet this one will be different, because Charlotte is different (in the best possible way). 

While Charlotte enters the blogosphere with a long and successful track record in domains and development (and all of the disciplines associated with them, like SEO and online marketing) you can expect the Savannah, Georgia native's writing to reflect her good nature and primary love - the people in our industry - rather than the underlying mechanics of the business. 

Charlotte noted DomainQueen.com will be "a positive blog about the people who make all of this happen, from selling a name, to building out a site, to advertisers, to media moguls etc...there are so many of us in this industry who have many talents and more connections than are immediately known," she said.

With DomainQueen.com now on the scene you can expect to start hearing more about those talents, connections and previously 

 Charlotte Gilbert
DomainQueen.com  

unexplored pastimes. Charlotte has already rolled out one feature - a series of interviews in which industry folks do their best to answer 15 (occasionally off the wall) questions with frequently funny and unexpected - even bewildering - results. You've never seen the people you know and love answer questions like these (I did mention Charlotte's blog would be different didn't I?) 

As you can see, you are in for a fun time at DomainQueen.com (as well as an informative one - Charlotte knows the best way to get you to take your medicine is to add a little bit of sugar!)  By the way - and I know you don't need another reason to like her - but both Charlotte and her equally personable husband (and fellow domain domain industry fixture) Brian Gilbert are  U.S. military veterans. I wish they had been in my unit when I was in the service - I would have had a heck of a lot more fun and even if it meant a little time in the brig it would have been worth it!

After beginning life as a division of  Demand Media, domain conglomerate Rightside Group Ltd. completed its first day as an independent public company today. The spinoff from Demand trades on the NASDAQ exchange under a very appropriate symbol: NAME. Rightside owns domain name registrars (Name.com and Enom.com), many new gTLD registries and a 50% stake in domain auction powerhouse NameJet.com.