With Over 120 Speakers and 100+ Sessions the Upcoming Edition of NamesCon Online is a BIG Deal With a Small Price Tag

Due to the global pandemic the domain industry has not been able to come together in person at a major conference since the NamesCon Global event in Austin, Texas in January 2020. Though Covid-19 is still preventing us from getting together face to face in significant numbers, we are fortunate that NamesCon has managed to create and produce an online version of the big show that has  proven to be the best possible solution to current conference hurdles. 

They did it for the first time in  September 2020, then repeated that success with another widely praised event in January 2021. Now are set to do it yet again when the 3rd edition of NamesCon Online runs Wednesday through Friday, September 22-24, 2021. 

The scale of what will be going on over those three days is beyond the scope of a single article like this, so let me sum it up this way. NamesCon Online will bring together more than 1,500 registrants from over 60 countries around the world. They will hear from more than 120 expert speakers who will appear in over 100 sessions that will be spread across four stages, as well as a separate daily MasterClass being provided by ParkLogic.com Founder Michael Gilmour. You can see the entire agenda here. You can also see who the individual speakers will be on the Home Page at NamesCon.online.

The remarkable thing about this is that the cost for all of that value comes to a grand total of $99 for the three-day event pass that you can get here.

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ROTD Announces 1st Group of Premium Domains for Next Week's NamesCon Auction, Pre-Bidding Open Now

As we told you at the end of August, the NamesCon Online conference coming up next week (Wednesday, September 22 through Friday, September 24) will feature three separate domain auctions. The marquee event will be the traditional RightOfTheDot (ROTD) live Premium Domain Auction that is set to run Thursday, Sept. 23, starting at 3PM U.S. Eastern Daylight time). ROTD just released a list of the first group of premium domain names that will be up for sale and opened  pre-bidding on those names at ROTD.hibid.com. 

After receiving thousands of submissions for the auction, ROTD selected 300-400 premium names for pre-bidding, with new names being added daily. At the end of the pre-bidding period, 75-100 domains will be selected for the live auction September 23. That event will be broadcast live from a professional video streaming production studio in South Florida.  World Champion Auctioneer Wayne Wheat and RightOfTheDot President Monte Cahn will run the sale that will be live streamed on both the NamesCon website and the ROTD YouTube Channel. ROTD provided this sampling of some of the premium names that are available for bidding now:

To participate, bidders must first register at https://rotd.hibid.com. To place bids over $2,000, bidders must be verified so it’s important not to wait until the last minute to register. Registration with NamesCon Online is not required but is strongly encouraged. You can register for the conference here. 

RightOfTheDot will also conduct an online extended auction starting on September 24th that will feature additional premium domains, along with those that did not meet reserves in the live auction. That will be a timed auction without an auctioneer. The first lots in the extended auction will begin closing on Thursday, October 7, 2021, at 1:30 PM EDT.

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11 Years After an Electrifying Domain Purchase, Bill Karamouzis Sells His Company for $35 Million 

Back in 2010, game developer Bill Karamouzis made a purchase that changed the way many of us thought about the value of domain names. As we detailed in a DN Journal Cover Story about Bill that year, his $350,000 purchase of CookingGames.com left just about everyone in this industry in a state of utter disbelief. Literally. We were flooded with messages from people who thought the sale couldn't possibly be real. Most wondered "what are "cooking games" anyway? Bill knew what they were and he knew just about everything else there was to know about both the game business and the kinds of domains he could use to make money in that field. Prior to the CookingGames.com purchase he had already spent over $4 million on other domains that his company, Addicting Games, had developed into big winners.

Having been schooled on just how valuable some obscure (to the rest of us) two-word .com domains could be, we have been following Bill's career ever since and watched his gaming empire keep getting bigger and bigger. The culmination

Bill Karamouzis
Addicting Games Founder

of his wisdom and years of hard work arrived this week when Karamouzis sold his Addicting Games empire to Enthusiast Gaming for $35 million. The acquisition includes Addicting Games, Shockwave, Type Racer, ioGames Space, Little Big Snake, Diep.io, EV.io, Mope.io, Math Games and more than 1,000 instant games.

Karmouzis noted, “We’re game developers. Everything we’re doing is around product and around the player. And that’s really what we focused on. Enthusiast Gaming brings so many eyeballs. They have partnerships with influencers and content creators. They have marketing relationships and partnerships with major advertisers. It’s a nice marriage of the two talents between the two companies. And so for us, we’re, we’re excited to get our products in front of their audience!”

Congratulations to Bill and his entire team. Enthusiast Gaming has already stated they are keeping everyone from the Addicting Games crew in their rapidly growing line up. 

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While the Domain Aftermarket Boomed Verisign Reports New Registrations Were a Mixed Bagged in 2Q-2021

Verisign (the administrator of the .com and .net TLDs) has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief covering the 2nd quarter of 2021. The quarter closed with 367.3 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs) worldwide, an increase of 3.8 million domain registrations (a 1.0% gain) from the previous quarter. The new total is down 2.8 million registration from the same point last year but that entire drop (and then some) came from one source - new gTLDs. They lost 8.8 million registrations year over year, plunging 27.8% to 22.9 million total. The new G's did show some stabilization since the last quarter though, actually registering a small 2Q increase from 1Q-2021.

Verisign's marquee TLD, .com, finished 2Q-2021 with 157.0 million registrations, up 2.4 million 
(+1.55%) from the previous quarter and a healthy 8.3 million (+5.5%) year over year. Their .net TLD inched up to 13.6 million registrations from the 13.4 million .net stood at both a year ago and a quarter ago.

Total country-code TLD (ccTLD) domain name registrations came in at 157.7 million at the end of the second quarter of 2021. This is an increase of 1.2 million registrations since the end of the first quarter, but a decrease of 2.4 million registrations year over year. As was the case with total registrations, the ccTLD drop YOY can be attributed to a single culprit. The .tk TLD, that is given away free and is subject to huge fluctuations, accounted for all of the country code drop. Taking that extension out of the equation, ccTLDs gained 400,000 registrations over the past year. 

The bottom line in the new registration business was determined by what you were selling. There were some big winners (especially .com), some that treaded water and others that lost ground this time around the track.  

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Three Different Domain Auctions Will Be a Big Part of the Action at NamesCon Online Next Month

When NamesCon Online returns September 22-24, 2021 domain buyers and sellers will have multiple opportunities to ply their trade. Three distinctly different domain auctions are on the agenda for the three-day event. The first one will be a low or no reserve Rapid Fire Auction that will close the opening day of NamesCon Online Wednesday, September 22. It is scheduled to run from 19:00-20:00 UTC (3PM- 4PM US Eastern time). There will be no pre-bidding and no extended auction for this sale . That means you have to be in the (virtual) room to take part. If you have domains you would like to submit sale, you can do that here.

Day 2, Thursday, September 23, will close with the traditional live Premium Domain Auction conducted by RightOfTheDot.com (ROTD) President Monte Cahn and World

Champion auctioneer Wayne Wheat. They will be running this sale from a broadcast studio with a hand-picked selection of super-premium names going on the block. This high-stakes auction attracts the high-rollers of the domain world and is always an exciting  centerpiece at NamesCon events. The auction is slated to run from 19:00-20:00 UTC (3PM- 4PM US Eastern time). If you have a top tier domain you want to sell you can submit it for consideration here.

(Left to right): World Champion Auctioneer Wayne Wheat, Wayne's assistant Lebbeus Kemp and RightOfTheDot.com Founder Monte Cahn. 

The third auction at NamesOnline will be a first - the major conference debut of a handshake domain auction. The Flamingo Handshake Auction, to be held on the closing day of the conference, Friday, September 24, will give Handshake aficionados an opportunity to beef up their decentralized portfolio with high-quality Handshake TLDs - especially emoji domains and one-word destinations. Submissions for the live Handshake auction will remain open until September 17.

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Domain Sales Boom Not Limited to Aftermarket - Radix Reached New High in Premium Registration Revenue in 1H-2021

We've gotten used to seeing eye-popping prices in the domain aftermarket this year, but many registry operators are also scoring big gains with new premium registrations and renewals. Radix just released their semi-annual report on those categories, covering the 1st half of 2021 (.pdf file) and it showed the highest premium domain revenue total they've posted in one half to date. 

Just under $1.24 million came in from new premium domain registrations (the chart at right breaks down how much was produced by each of Radix's 10 TLDs). The figure was even higher for the company's premium domain renewals, coming in at $1.67 million, for a grand total of $2.91 million. Total revenue was approximately $2 million in the previous half. These numbers reflect a 43% jump in revenue from new premium registration over the previous half (2H-2020) and a 47% surge in premium renewal income over the same period. 

.Tech generated the most new premium registration revenue at $362,401 (an average cost for its 314 registrations of $1,154 each). #2 earner, .Store, had a slightly higher number of registrations (316) but, with a $282,905 total, a lower average cost at $895).

63.5% of premium names up for their first renewal were kept by their owners (the renewal cost is the same as the original registration cost). The renewal rate is over 80% for renewals in the second and third years after the initial registrations.

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The Domain Social is Going Out With a Bang - Free 9-Day Domainer Week Event Begins Thursday

Early last year the Covid-19 pandemic had made it clear that face to face domain meetings would be off the table for the foreseeable future. That promoted Michael Cyger to create an online substitute called The Quarantine Social in March 2020. When summer arrived, Michael, who is always busy with DNAcademy.com, needed to give up the social chores, but another industry veteran, Arif Mirza, was there to pick up the ball in July. Arif renamed the project The Domain Social and every Friday afternoon since then, domain investors from around the world have come together for the Zoom-based events that he produces and hosts. While the socials have been highly appreciated, the workload finally caught up with the Montreal based branding consultant and digital marketer too. So, The Domain Social is coming to close - but not without one giant last hurrah!

Arif Mirza

Domainer Week will open at 12:30pm (US Eastern time) on Thursday when Arif will greet attendees and lay out what is in store for the day and week to follow. The first business session will follow at 1pm when Arif (at left in the photo above) will welcome GoDaddy GM & VP (Aftermarket) Paul Nicks (center) and DNJournal.com Editor and Publisher Ron Jackson (at right) to join him for a discussion on the state of the domain business today. That session will run about 75 minutes, followed by a 15-minute Sponsor Break (even sponsorship for Domainer Week is free with any charitable contribution).

In the 2nd session Thursday, at 2:30pm, Michael Cyger and Jason Sheppard (both from DNAcademy.com) and JoshReason (DNWE.com) will take over with tips on How to Invest in Domains. Opening Day will conclude with a Domain Social scheduled to run from 4pm to 6pm (they have been known to run over). You can check out the schedule and speakers for the entire week here. 

Domainer Week will conclude with the grand finale - the  last Domain Social - starting at 4pm Friday, September 3 - and I will be shocked if that one doesn't run way over! To get your free access to all of the activities, all you need to do is sign up here.

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With the Agenda Now Set and the Show Just 4 Weeks Away NamesCon Online is Ready to Rock Again

After a successful show In January, NamesCon Online is returning for a star-studded autumn edition September 22-24, 2021. The agenda for sessions that will run concurrently on two stages throughout the show was essentially finalized today when a Fireside Chat I will have with the Castello Brothers, industry pioneers, Michael and David, was slated to kick off the final day of the three-day event at 11:05am (U.S. Eastern time) on Friday, September 24. I'm looking forward to sitting down with my long-time friends for a two-pronged talk titled How The Pandemic Launched A Domain Gold Rush and Why the Public Should Benefit, Not Monopolies. 

With a portfolio of top-tier one-word dictionary .com domains - the hottest commodity on the current domain aftermarket - Michael and David

Michael Castello (left) & David Castello
Castello Cities Internet Network

(whose past sales have hit as high as $3.1 million for a single domain- Whisky.com) are perfectly positioned to provide insight into the current domain sales boom. Just yesterday, the highest publicly reported sale of the year to date, Hippo.com at $3.3 million, was reported. that one came on the heels of a pair of 7-figure sales that Larry Fischer posted the week before (Marketing.com at $2.5 million and Near.com at $1.15 million). 

As good as things are on the sales front right now, the Castello Brothers have always kept a close eye on the big picture and developments that are important to all independent online entrepreneurs.  Michael, in particular, has written extensively about monopolistic practices by today's tech giants that need to be reined in to assure an even playing field for all, so we will be breaking that down as well.  

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George Kirikos Uncovers a $3.3 Million Blockbuster - the Biggest Domain Sale of the Year to Date

The world's #1 domain sleuth, George Kirikos, has done it again. As he reported on his FreeSpeech.com blog Sunday afternoon, Kirikos presented incontrovertible evidence that a US-based insurance technology company, Hippo Enterprises, purchased the Hippo.com domain name in the first quarter of this year for $3,300,000. With that, Hippo.com charges into the top spot on the 2021 top domain sales list (we will be officially charting it when our next bi-weekly domain sales report comes out Wednesday, September 1. 

This sale eclipses the $3.15 million sale of Christmas.com that has topped our YTD Top 100 Sales Chart since February. This wasn't as easy find for George. He first found evidence that a big sale had been completed while looking through a Hippo Enterprises SEC filing. However, as he details in his blog post, after the initial reference that piqued his interest,

Image from Bigstock

he had to dig out several other bits of information from multiple sources to definitively lock down the price paid for this premium domain.

Since Larry Fischer has also announced a 7-figure sale since our last domain sales report - (Near.com at $1.15 mllion) - there will at least two seven-figure sales at the top on our next bi-weekly Top 20 Sales Chart, the first time that will have happened in a year that has now had ten 7-figure sales come to light.

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Larry Fischer Logs His 2nd 7-Figure Sale THIS WEEK and Morgan Linton Brokers a $542,500 Deal

Less than 24 hours after I published our latest bi-weekly domain sales report, Larry Fischer (GetYourDomain.com), who led this week's chart after brokering a $2,500,000 sale of Marketing.com, announced another 7-figure sale! As Elliot Silver detailed at 

DomainInvesting,com today, Larry's second blockbuster sale of the week was Near.com at $1,150,000 in a sale made to a Singapore-based company that has raised $134 million in funding through its Series D funding rounds. Ari Goldberger and Jason Schaeffer at ESQwire.com handled escrow duties on the deal.

The main theme of this week's sales report was the remarkable frequency of seven-figure sales we've seen this summer (our latest report was the sixth consecutive edition, covering 12 weeks, that has a seven-figure sale at the top of the chart). With the Near.com sale, that streak will become 7 straight when our next edition comes out September 1.  It is especially impressive when you consider that these publicly reported sales are just the tip of a much bigger iceberg.

Image from Bigstock

In yet another impressive sale, Morgan Linton let me know today that he had just finished brokering a $542,500 sale of Able.com. In that transaction, Morgan represented the buyer, whom one of Morgan's friends had introduced him to. Morgan said completing the mission - getting the owner to sell - ended up being a complex process but he got the job done. As those of you who know Morgan are aware, he is such a nice guy it is hard for anyone to say no to him (a great quality for a broker to have)!

We will be updating our YTD Top 100 Sales Charts when our next bi-weekly report is released. As of today, Larry's sale of Near.com is the 8th biggest sale reported so far in 2021 (his Marketing.com sale is #2). Morgan's sale gives him a spot among the high fliers in the top 20. It has been great seeing the sales boom this year. The only downside is I am getting calluses on my finger tips from constantly pounding the calculator keys - and the year is still young!

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Larry Fischer & Ari Goldberger Team Up to Close a $2.5 Million Sale of Marketing.com

In the 2nd biggest publicly reported domain sale so far this year, industry pioneer Larry Fischer (GetYourDomain.com) has brokered a $2,500,000 sale of Marketing.com with his long time friend, partner and domain attorney Ari Goldberger (ESQwire.com) handling the escrow. When we add this sale to our charts in our next bi-weekly domain sales report on Wednesday evening (August 18) it will trail only the $3.15 million sale of Christmas.com on our 2021 YTD Top 100 Sales Chart.

As of this writing we don't know the identity of the buyer (the WhoIs record in under privacy) and the landing page at Marketing.com simply reads "Coming Soon." Whoever, acquired it got one of the premier domains on the Internet - an area Larry and Ari specialize in (another recent example being their sale of Home.com at an undisclosed price earlier this year).

This is the 8th publicly reported 7-figure domain sale so far this year with many others undoubtedly having been made under NDAs. Of the top six sales, four are one-word dictionary domains (Christmas.com, Marketing.com, Angel.com and Exodus.com) and two are rare two-letter .coms (IS.com and EE.com).

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Campaign Led by Radix's .Tech Domains Raises $62,000 to Expand Computer Science Access in Schools

Back in May, we told you about a new program that .Tech Domains (owned and operated by Radix) was launching in collaboration with Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools. The campaign, labeled #MyStartInTech, sought to eliminate widening gaps that impact young women and students from marginalized communities who are interested in computer science. Domain.com, GoDaddy Pro and Namecheap also got behind the effort and the final results have just been announced. With .Tech Domains and their campaign partners donating 100% of .Tech domain sales proceeds in May and June, over $62,000 was raised for Code.org.

The .Tech announcement noted, 
"The tech industry is historically plagued by stark under-representation of gender, race, ethnicity, geography, and family income. In fact, Code.org data shows that as of 2020, less than half of high schools in the United States teach foundational computer science, despite the fact that the number of job openings in the space have been multiplying year over year. The pandemic has further worsened this gap; disproportionately affecting students from already under-represented groups, especially since Covid-19 forced millions into remote or socially-distanced classrooms."

Suman Das, Sr. Director of Brand Operations, .Tech Domains, said, “We are proud of the awareness we’ve been able to create with the #MyStartInTech campaign for this incredibly important issue. Amassing more than 5 million impressions, this campaign not only illustrates how deep this issue goes in the United States, but also that there is a passion to learn more about it, solve it, and ultimately create an ecosystem that prioritizes equal access to computer science education in schools.”  

The campaign was supported by many notable figures from the tech industry such as Jason Calacinus, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, podcaster; Linus Sebastian, founder of YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips with over 13.5 million subscribers, and many more.    

The campaign also included a series of educational webinars, hosted in association with GoDaddy Pro and Major League Hacking (MLH), that cumulatively garnered over 45,000 attendees tuning in to hear experts discuss the staggering statistics surrounding the lack of access to computer science in schools across the U.S., what they mean for the future of tech education, and how the tech community could come together to widen access to computer science in schools.

Elpida Moutsiou, Global Marketing Manager, Domains at Namecheap, added, “Everything we do at Namecheap is driven by our mission to keep the Internet open, free, and safe for everyone. When our partner Radix reached out to us to collaborate on a program that supports access to computer science to more young people, we just had to go all in! It is our belief that computer science is fundamental for everyone, everywhere. Code.org's mission to teach computer science to young women, and students from marginalized communities, is one we are proud to support by donating all our proceeds for .TECH domain sales during this two month period.”  

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George Kirikos Uncovers One of the 3 Biggest Domain Sales Reported Year to Date as 7-Figure Sales Continue to Pile Up 

While a lot of us spend our summer weekends relaxing, one of the industry's most successful investors, George Kirikos, seems to spend at least a portion of his poring over government SEC filings in search of important, previously unreported domain sales. In doing so, George has broken the news on so many big ones I would estimate the number in approaching triple digits now (if not already there). Over the past weekend he did it again, uncovering and reporting the details of a $1,950,000 sale of IS.com on his FreeSpeech.com blog. 

George found the key information in a filing made by ironSource Ltd., who acquired the domain in a deal  closed in the first quarter of this year. However, as he details in his article, he had to carefully go through additional materials to get all of the evidence he needed to deliver an ironclad

finding about the transaction. This kind of spadework is something Kirikos routinely does and I have too often failed to properly acknowledge that by simply saying he found the information in a government filing. By going well beyond that in his meticulous research, he has produced a treasure trove of sales information that has benefited all of us - and continues to do so on a remarkably regular basis.

George's latest filing means that, for the 5th week in a row, our bi-weekly domain sales report will include at least one 7-figure sale when it comes out Wednesday evening (August 4). As of this writing, IS.com is the 3rd biggest publicly reported sale year to date. Only Christmas.com ($3.15 million) and Angel.com ($2 million) have been bigger.

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