Demand Media continues to invest into content and content infrastructure:

SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Demand Media, Inc., the next-generation social media company, today announced its acquisition of ExpertVillage.com, the premier Internet source for professional “how-to” videos filmed and produced by local filmmakers that feature experts on a broad range of topics. The acquisition significantly expands Demand Media’s social media platform with a growing library of diverse video content to be distributed across its network of niche social media web properties and available for users to integrate into their Channelme.tv video sites.

Launched with video in 2006, ExpertVillage is a highly trafficked video portal for how-to information and the largest provider of “made for the Internet” video content. This content was created through ExpertVillage’s proprietary process wherein filmmakers select specific how-to topics and produce videos on that subject matter. The filmmaker engages an expert on the selected topic and produces approximately 15 short how-to videos.

[...]

“We intend on increasing the scale of ExpertVillage’s existing business and expanding into new content areas,” said Demand Media co-founder and CEO, Richard Rosenblatt. “While we have enhanced our media properties through textual, photographic and social media content, we were seeking a video solution that could be integrated into our platform. ExpertVillage’s video solution and its network of filmmakers epitomize our approach to new media and our scale will provide their filmmakers with substantially more topics to develop. We are anxious to begin working together as one company.”

[full Press Release]

Keith Pieper of Zetetic sends an email with his report “Eight players dominate the domain name aftermarket“.

While private sales account for the vast majority of the US$111 million domain resale market (more than 24 percent), eight exchanges or brokers compete for dominance while domain valuations skyrocket.

“Private transactions are where most of the big deals take place,” Zetetic Senior Analyst Keith Pieper said. “But the market has gotten very lucrative with a dominant four holding companies accounting for nearly 46 percent of all transactions.”

1. Afternic
2. Afternic Bazaar
   
3. BuyDomains
4. DomainCargo
5. GDNX
6. GoDaddy
7. Moniker
8. Sedo

For more information please see the full report.

Interesting that DomainCargo made it to Keith’s list, while DomainMarketPlace does not appear in it. I am surprised to see GDNX in the report, unless this refers to Pool.com sales. I would imagine that there are some brokers that dominate the domain sales market in private sales, but the sale data is almost impossible to obtain.

Some Canadian news from the public Domain Company Communicate.com, holders and developers of such sites as perfume.com. Their current CEO, David Jeffs stepped down:
From their blog:

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA — (MARKET WIRE) — June 01, 2007 — Communicate.com Inc. (OTCBB: CMNN), an emerging growth, debt-free eCommerce company, is pleased to announce the appointment of seasoned Internet industry executive C. Geoffrey Hampson as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors, effective immediately.

David Jeffs will continue as Communicate.com’s President and will remain a Director of the Company’s Board.

Communicate.com is also pleased to announce that Mr. Hampson has invested USD$1 million into the Company through a non-brokered private placement of 1 million units. Each unit consists of a common share of Communicate.com and a common share warrant exercisable at $1.25 per share. As per U.S. Securities regulations, the common shares are restricted and are subject to a minimum one-year holding period.

Mr. Hampson has been a Founder, President and CEO of many successful start-up and operating companies over the last 25 years. Mr. Hampson was CEO and President of PEER 1 Network Enterprises, Inc., an Internet infrastructure company. During his leadership, PEER 1 grew from a small local player with annual revenues of approximately USD$250,000 to one of the largest in the industry, with annual revenues of approximately USD$61,000,000 and data centers and network points of presence in 14 cities across North America and in Europe. Mr. Hampson was the founder and CEO of Novocon International Inc., a manufacturer of fiber products for composite reinforcement until Synthetic Industries acquired it in 1997.  

[via blog.cmnn.com]

A recent press release by Sedo helped getting me started on the topic of bringing premium domains to the mainstream market.

Sedo announces partnership with DomainsBot – from the press release:

“This partnership provides an enormous amount of value to service providers by increasing the domain registration rate while adding a new revenue stream without additional costs,” said Mark Klein, Sedo’s Director of Business Development. “The tool itself adds tremendous value to the customer experience by making it increasingly easy for people to find a domain name that fits their needs.”

When a Webhost company or Registrar integrates and displays the Sedo portion of the domain suggestion tool to its users, Sedo will pay the costs that would normally have to be paid to Domainsbot for the queries executed and will also pay the service provider commissions of any transactions that come through Sedo.

DomainsBot executives are excited about the opportunities this integration brings.

“Having Sedo sponsor our name suggestion is a terrific win-win for the entire market,” said Emiliano Pasqualetti, DomainsBot’s Chief Operating Officer. “This gives registrars the opportunity to increase their sales and profit from the exponentially growing secondary market at no cost, and registrants the advantage to find the most relevant domains available and for sale in one place.”

This means that any registrar that would like to integrate the DomainsBot Namespinner with the Sedo results, can now get a namespinner for free if the search results include domains listed on the Sedo marketplace.

The name spinner marketplace

DomainsBot has managed to sign up the right clients and assemble a good development team. There are two major competitors in their market, with DomainTools’ Domain Suggestions being the oldest competitor, after VPOP’s NameBrain faded into oblivion. Also the registry operator Verisign offers accredited registrars a free namespinning tool. All of those tools are being offered to registrars and DomainsBot and DomainTools offer theirs on their own website as well. As far as I know the marketplace currently lacks a service that is capable of providing similar name suggestions for other languages than English.
What differentiates Verisign’s NameSpinner, apart from the fact that it’s free, is that it integrates some of their data from the news aggregator Moreover. However Verisign’s tool does not include domain names that are listed for sale, which are included in the search results from DomainTools and DomainsBot.

Bringing premium domains to the mainstream registrants

In order to bring domains to the retail market, endusers need to be made aware of the value and option of buying premium domains. However there is a major hurdle to overcome in order to get hosting companies and domain resellers to integrate premium names into their offerings: They don’t want to send their customer away.

Let’s take a look what a typical integration of an affiliate program for a domain marketplace would look like on the hosting companiy’s website.

1. Registrant searches for available domains
2. Finds a premium name in the results that he likes
3. Clicks on the affiliate link that brings him to the domain aftermarket website
4. Places a bid on the domain if it’s an auction or submits an offer
5. Receives a response, possibly needs to respond again
6. Finally purchases the domain name
7. Escrow procedure starts
8. Escrow procedure completes
9. Registrant takes possession of new domain
10. Registrant sets up hosting

If the registrant in this scenario is not a current and loyal hosting customer at the hosting company where they performed the lookup, they might now end up hosting their domain elsewhere. After all this whole process probably takes a couple of weeks already, so the hosting company might have sent a customer away, instead of serving the customer directly. While they might earn an affiliate commission, their longterm customer value is much higher if the customer signs up for hosting immediately.
In order to get more hosting companies and resellers to offer premium domains, the purchase process needs to be integrated. This also means that the marketplace selling the domain will need to have control over the domain name when it’s offered for sale, in order to facilitate a quick purchase/transfer process. And after the sale is closed, the registrant should be referred back to the hosting company where the lead originated.

So here’s what the sales process should look like:

1. Premium domain is offered on the webhosting companies’ site in an availability search
2. Registrant decides to purchase premium name
3. Registrant choses hosting package
4. Hosting company bills the Registrant
5. Hosting company transfers domain name to their registrar and changes contact information

Currently there are only a few market places that can offer this level of integration, including a quick domain transfer via an API. First of all, companies that sell their own portfolios, such as FabulousDomains or Buydomains can offer this. Also the Pool Marketplace, which requires users to transfer their names to them before you can actually sell them, could offer this level of integration. So only a company that also holds control over the domain name is uniquely positioned at this point to offer a fully integrated sale and transfer. After all, if you were running a hosting company, would you want to send the user elsewhere when he’s just about to sign up?

A press release from Sedo says that they have lowered the minimum commission for .co.uk sales to 50 Euros, which is about 35 British Pound or just under $70 USD.

From the press release:

This comes at a time when the .CO.UK Secondary Domain Name market sees a growth of more than 150% in the last year alone. Sedo’s Director of UK Operations, Nora Cotter comments that “many of our customers, particularly those on Acorn Domains Forum have requested such a reduction, to further drive growth and development in the UK domain name aftermarket. We hope that our price cut will pave the way for increased development of the UK market and will especially help to foster a greater volume of sales in the under-€500 category. Our statistics for 2006 show that the role of organized domain sales platforms like Sedo are gaining in importance and ultimately driving a greater value than private sales as we provide a variety of services that can help domain owners optimize their investments. We hope this commission reduction will be another aid to development in the UK aftermarket and will help both buyers and sellers alike.”

Not content to just slash service prices, Sedo is also aiming to improve performance in their domain transfers. In a small number of transfers each year, the buyer of a domain name delays sending their Sedo transfer agent their IPS Tag. In those instances, Sedo can now temporarily move the domain to their own Tag so they can pay out those sellers, who have completed all of their responsibilities, more quickly. Nora Cotter points out that “this might not sound like much, but it’s something that the Sedo customers and UK forum members have been requesting for some time. We hope it will make it more possible for us to make timely payment to a seller in the occasional case where the ownership formalities have been completed but the buyer is delaying the process.

I’ve found Sedo a good place to sell the occasional domain, even though the completion of the sale and the payout can sometimes last a long time due to the escrow period.

Personally I would prefer it if their commission would differentiate where the buyer came from. If a user types in the domain name directly and then proceeds to submit an offer, the marketplace itself is still facilitating the sale/escrow, but has little to do with getting the actual client. So the facilitator would only deserve their full commission if the buyer finds the domain in the marketplace listings.

With yesterday’s (re-)launch of the sale of premium .tv names by eNom (which appears to have launched a couple of hours late), many of the premium .TV names have become available again. Of course they remained at a premium price, just like before.

The sale of the names appears to have been integrated into eNom’s aftermarket site where all of the available premium names are listed. The prices range from $52 for “gaps.tv” and to $500,000 for “business.tv”. The list of premium names currently contains over 52,000 names.

Over the years the registry and different licensees of the ccTLD for the island of Tuvalu have tried different models to market their premium names, including increasing renewal fees for some of the names deemed special by the registry. In the current model the site states that the annual renewal fees will be as high as the initial purchase price, but also says that the renewal fees are “subject to change”. So the question remains: Will successful sites be charged a higher renewal fee?

As reported earlier the .tv TLD will be promoted with the inclusion of sitebuilding and MySpace like-networking tools, which is a unique approach for TLD promotion. The portal into all of the sites, originally called “ChannelMe.tv” has now been relaunched as “me.tv“. Sample sites built with the new tools are: Carson Daly.tv and ambler.tv (eNom employees were given a .TV domain each, more information on it here).

The tools included in with the purchase of the domain are:

• Channel Builder: Seamlessly integrated with a .TV purchase, users can create a full-functioning video-centric website “Channel”, including a choice of pre-designed themes and easy-to-use video management tools.
• Grab It® Bookmarklet: Users can browse top video sites and with a single click “grab” embed code and links for their favorite videos, allowing for quick and easy programming of their own .TV Channels. All “grabbed” video links are displayed live in the user’s .TV content archive, which can then be used to create custom playlists.
• Social Networking Tools: Each .TV Channel is its own social networking site, featuring private or public profiles, blogs, message boards, on-site messaging, user ratings, favorites, friends lists, comments, and photo albums.

The keynote for the re-release of the domain is being webcast today at 6pm PST on the AlwaysOn conference website, which also features an article on Carson Daly joining Demand Media in the promotion of the .tv TLD.

[via Press Release]

Following suit with the auctions at the Targeted TRAFFIC conferences, Oversee.net is now also offering an auction at their DomainFest conference.

Los Angeles, CA (May 1, 2007) — DomainSponsor, Oversee.net’s domain monetization business and organizing party of DOMAINfest Amsterdam, today announced that it had partnered with NICIT, a leader in the German-speaking aftermarket, to bring attendees the finest quality domain names for bidding in a live auction setting. DOMAINfest Amsterdam is a two-day regional seminar and networking event created specifically to respond to the needs of domainers operating in the European business environment. The event will be held May 16-17, 2007 at the Hilton Amsterdam Hotel.

High value domains will be auctioned in a premium live auction on site in Amsterdam. The balance of the names will be offered through NICIT’s online auction site. Participants in the auction can submit domains, pre-bid on the auction and bid during the live auction. The auction will take place on May 17, 2007 at 5:00 p.m. (Central European Time). To get more details on how to participate, go to the NICIT/DOMAINfest Auction site (http://nicit.com/domainfest).

“Hosting an auction with NICIT adds a new dimension to DOMAINfest Amsterdam,” said Ron Sheridan, Director of Business Development for DomainSponsor. “This will truly be a global auction with an array of TLDs being offered. Our objective is to make this relevant to a broader domain buying audience. It is a natural evolution of DOMAINfest as we strive to offer more to the domainer community, and establish this event as the premier conference and marketplace for the domain industry.”

To register or to get more information on DOMAINfest Amsterdam, visit http://www.domainfest.com or e-mail info@domainfest.com.

Sedo [...] today announced that Mark Klein has been appointed the company’s Director of Business Development. Klein will be responsible for managing relationships with key partners, identifying new strategic partnerships and administering international, wholesale and distributor sales.

“Mark is a great addition to the Sedo team, bringing with him a successful sales record and an in-depth understanding of the domain market,” said Tim Schumacher, CEO, Sedo “We’re looking forward to the future growth he will drive for the company.”

Klein has over twelve years of sales experience in internet solutions. Before joining Sedo, Klein served as Business Development Manager at Tucows, where he spent five years.

I’ve worked with Mark before and I think he’s a great addition to the Sedo team.

[via Press Release]

While most companies in this space are looking to expand their sales channels, Pool.com just announced that they are ending their affiliate program as of May 1st, 2007. Pool.com operates a drop name snapping service, domain tasting as well as a domain market place. The company is part of the Canadian Momentous group.

[via eMail]

After TRAFFIC is before TRAFFIC and while I am still recovering from a conference that meant “great networking” to me, I received a press release from Sedo. Sedo is going to hold their second SedoPro PartnerForum at the beautiful Mohonk Resort in New Paltz, NY directly before the TRAFFIC New York City conference June 17-19, 2007.