|
The
final day of Domain Roundtable 2006 got off to a great start
Friday morning (April 21) with the Name Intelligence Awards.
Leaders in every aspect of the business were recognized during
the breakfast ceremonies.
31 Name
Intelligence Awards were handed out at Domain Roundtable.
Six of the winners are seen in this photo. Pictured left to
right are Michael Collins (Afternic),
Eric Harrington (Moniker), Bill Mushkin (Name.com),
Show Producer Jothan Frakes of
Name Intelligence, Paul Stahura (Enom), Clint
Page (Dotster) and Tim Ruiz (GoDaddy).
ALL
of the envelopes please….
|
|
User’s
Choice Awards
(for favorite
registrars; the 9 chosen are listed in alphabetical order):
|
BulkRegister.com
Dotster.com
Enom.com
GoDaddy.com
MelbourneIT.com
|
Name.com
NetworkSolutions.com
Register.com
Tucows.com
|
Best
Community Registrar
Moniker.com
|
Best
ICANN Reseller
Enom.com
|
Best
Performing Parking Program
DomainSponsor.com
|
Best
Place to Talk
DNForum.com
|
| Community
Award
(given to
five users who have made outstanding contributions to
their respective communities):
|
|
Bruce
Levinson at CircleID.com
Eric
Sizemore at NamePros.com
|
John
Berryhill and Joseph Slabaugh
at DNForum.com
Charles
Christopher at DomainState.com
|
|
Community
of the Year
ICANNWiki.org
The
Giving Back Award
Public
Interest Registry (operators of the .org registry)
Largest
Net Gain
GoDaddy.com
Most
Innovative With Domains
Microsoft.com
|
|
Outstanding
Drop Catcher (3 were recognized)
Enom’s
Club Drop
Pool.com
SnapNames.com
Best
Industry Coverage
DNJournal.com
Best
Transparency Advocate
Brett Fausett
Outstanding
Secondary Market (2 were
recognized)
Afternic.com
Sedo.com
For
more details on the awards visit this link at DomainTools.com
| Another
conference highlight, the CEO Roundtable, followed the Name
Intelligence Awards. Everyone was on hand in the main ballroom
to hear a panel that included Paul Stahura (Enom.com), Clint
Page (Dotster.com), Bill Mushkin (Name.com), Eric Harrington (Moniker.com)
and Tim Ruiz (GoDaddy.com). Name Intelligence CEO Jay
Westerdal
served as the moderator.
An
opportunity to hear everything said on this panel is another
good reason to order the conference DVD. Among the many
highlights, Tim Ruiz pointed to small business websites,
podcasts and contact points (contacts tied to a domain name) as
important factors driving the current boom in the domain market.
|
Jay
Westerdal
CEO, Name Intelligence |
Eric Harrington said wireless web access will accelerate the
demand for domains and that category is just getting underway
(with .mobi expected to play an important role).
Bill Mushkin agreed noting that the entire space was like an
adolescent and that made it a scary but exciting place to be. He
thinks the best times are still ahead noting “It takes 18
years to get a kid out of the house!”
| People
are always looking for major changes when technology is
involved, but Clint Page said domain names will always be the
starting point on the web. He added that because of the
indispensable role domains play the industry will continue to be
in the spotlight and more consolidation is coming. He also
predicted that IDNs will have a big impact.
Page added “We have been too .com centric. We need more new
TLDs to take off too. I think that is very healthy and will be good
for everyone. We are going to see a lot of changes.”
Paul Stahura said
the explosion in new registrations will continue and that pay per
click (PPC) would continue to be a key factor in industry
growth, briniging in more private equity from players who want
to share in the growth. Stahura also predicted that new TLDs
will enjoy excellent growth.
|
Clint
Page
Dotster.com CEO |
Tim
Ruiz said GoDaddy would like to see new gTLDs but wants the
process to be changed. When all of the desirable names are
grabbed instantly by speculators (as we recently saw with .eu)
he said that stunts growth and devalues the space, so his
company will push for reform in the way new names are allocated.
Eric
Harrington voiced disapproval over the Verisign-ICANN .com
agreement saying that market forces are not being allowed to
work. He said now costs will go up when in a free market they
would actually be going down. He wants capitalists to be able to
go out and compete. Tim Ruiz agreed saying the agreement favored
one player (Verisign) over everyone else. He added that if
things don’t change ICANN could be supplanted by something
else. He does not want to see that but does want to see
improvement at ICANN.
| After
the CEO Roundtable I attended a Portfolio Valuation Workshop
featuring Victor Pitts (Moniker.com), Dan Warner (Fabulous.com)
and Tim Chen (iREIT.com). One other seminar on legal and
business issues ran concurrently and also would have been an
excellent choice. Tim Chen said that people try to make
portfolio valuation a science but there is a lot of art to it
because of the many factors that have to be taken into account.
Among those are quality of the traffic; is it type in, link
traffic (which will decay), search engine traffic (which will go
away if the domain is parked) and are trademarked names
involved? He sees a great opportunity because “values are all
over the place and that can result in very large profits.”
Chen
also noted that it may be wise to split a portfolio into
categories rather than to sell it all to one buyer, because some
buyers may value a particular category much higher than another
buyer would.
|
Tim
Chen
Business Development Director, iREIT.com |
Dan
Warner made the point that it’s not all about traffic, that
domain sales also has its own component value. He noted that if
you have 100,000 domains and sell 1.6% of them each year (which
is typical of large portfolios), that is 1,600 sales. At $1,000
per sale (a reasonable average) that is $1.6 million a year and
$16 million over 10 years. Renewal costs for those 100,000
domains over ten years at $8 per domain would be $8 million,
leaving a profit of $8 million (and that is before you even
figure in PPC revenue).
|
After
lunch, one final seminar was left on the schedule and this one
was alone on the schedule. So for once it was an easy choice!
Enom’s Chris Ambler was back for a session on the Expiring
Domain Marketplace. It was very enlightening, as were all of the
sessions I attended. I wish I could have been in all of them,
not only for the great educational opportunity, but to put the
spotlight on more of the great talent we have in this business.
I’m sorry that while following my personalized track I
wasn’t able to photograph and quote what was said by a lot of
other brilliant people.
Those
still on hand regrouped in the main ballroom for closing
comments from Jothan Frakes and the conference officially closed
at 3:15pm Friday (April 21), though many hung out to talk and
some even stayed over another night to extend the
party as long as possible.
|
Chris
Ambler explains the expiring domains marketplace in
the final seminar at DRT |
An
event like this makes you feel like a rechargeable battery that
has just been plugged into a high voltage outlet. It’s a rush
of electricity that supercharges your enthusiasm for an industry
that is truly unlike any other. I find every day in this
business is so interesting that I don’t like having to go to
bed at night - but what I really hate is having to wait another
year to find out what the Domain Roundtable team will do on
their third time around the track!
|
