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Chad Folkening – DNW Podcast #154
Chad Folkening has been in the domain business for over two decades. Here’s what he thinks.
Chad Folkening has been a domain investor for over 20 years. On this week’s show he discusses what he sees happening in the domain industry, how he thinks we can get more liquidity for domains, and how his company is building out domains. Also: Police raid, SSL woes, lower expired domain prices, $75k domain lost in UDRP and a good laugh.
Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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I still think emoji domains are a bad investment
My opinion hasn’t changed and here’s why.
I’ve had a few people email to ask what I think about emoji domain names as an investment, especially after domain investor Gregg Ostrick paid $11,201 for ☯.com (Punycode: xn--w4h.com).
My answer hasn’t changed since I wrote about this back in May: people are flushing money down the toilet.
With the exception of the 33 emoji domains registered in .com, people are investing in emoji domains in extensions they would never invest in otherwise, such as .ws. These emoji domains will only ever be gimmicks, especially because they render differently on various devices.
What would change my mind is if big end users started buying some of the domains that investors have picked up. Domainer-to-domainer sales don’t make a market. Eventually, they have to have demand from end users.
I don’t see that happening given the limitations of these domains.
Another warning: once domain investors go from snapping up all of the good domains in a niche to spending most of their time promoting how good of an investment that niche is, you’ve probably missed the boat.
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NTI.com domain name saved in UDRP
Company tried to upgrade from .dk to .com.
Domain name attorney John Berryhill has successfully defended domain investor Sahar Sarid’s domain name NTI.com in a UDRP.
The complaint was brought by NTI Cad Center A/S, which uses the Danish country code domain name NTI.dk.
A three-member Czech Arbitration Court panel found that the complainant’s NTI did not have substantial notoriety and that there are lots of companies that use the initials NTI. It also noted there was no evidence that Sarid’s company (Ashanti) had the complainant in mind when it registered the domain name.
Ashanti asked for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking, but the panel said it saw no evidence of harassment or an attempt to mislead the panel.
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Domain inquiries could drop next month. Blame SSL.
Start filling out a form on for sale landers and you’ll see a “not secure” message.
Yesterday I wrote about how landing page companies are adding SSL support for domains on their platforms in order to meet Google’s deadline next month. Starting next month, domain names with any sort of user submission form that don’t have an SSL certificate will be marked as “not secure” in Google Chrome when people enter text in the form.
This is also going to be an issue for domain name for sale pages that have a contact form. A “not secure” message in the browser will surely lead to some drop in conversions. The message will only appear when someone starts typing in the form, but that will probably catch their eye. It would be much better to have the green secure padlock.
You might say “Hey, if they really want the domain, they’ll find a way to contact me”. But domain sales companies have worked tirelessly to improve the conversion rate of their sales forms, so dismissing this issue out of hand doesn’t make sense.
Most of my domains are parked with Afternic and Uniregistry, and both of these should be OK.
Afternic parked pages don’t have a form on the landing page. Instead, like many parking companies, they include a banner with a link to a form on a secure site.
Uniregistry is the same for standard parked pages. If you choose the sales form option, the domain forwards to a page on Uniregistry.com that has SSL. For example, go to Sweller.com and you’ll be forwarded to Uniregistry.com.
I also have a few domains at BrandBucket. These have a contact form and will be marked as “not secure” starting next month if someone starts typing inside the form. Ditto for domains at Efty.
SSL certificates can be obtained for free, so there’s a solution for these companies that will not require shelling out lots of money on SSL certs. However, it’s going to require some technical work to make this happen. I recommend domain sales companies get working on this. Fast.
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Why lower prices at NameJet might mean more money for everyone
A lower starting price is a bet on higher sell-through rates.
NameJet is lowering the starting bid prices on a number of direct-transfer expiring domain names. These are the domains that are registered at partner registrars and don’t go through the full pending delete cycle.
Domains from Tucows (which owns half of NameJet) will be first to have a starting price of $39 instead of $69.
Why would lower starting prices make sense for registrars and NameJet? It’s all about the sell-through rate.
Every day, domainers pass on lots of domains at NameJet because they don’t want to pay $69 for them. They’d rather acquire them in the pending delete drops at lower prices, or just pass on them.
NameJet and Tucows get nothing when that happens. $39 is better than nothing.
Plus, one backorder at $39 spurs attention from other domainers who can bid up the price.
There’s a reason that GoDaddy starts its bidding at $12. While plenty of domains sell for less than $69 (or even $39), the sell-through rate is higher and the overall revenue per expiring domain is probably higher than if the minimum bid was $69.
It will be interesting to see if Tucows selects certain domains to have the lower price or puts all of them in at the lower price. It will also be interesting to see how this price point works. If other partners jump on board, it’s safe to say that it worked.
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SSL comes to landing page tools, but at a price
Services that make it easy to create landing pages across multiple domains need to implement SSL.
Next month is the deadline for most sites to move to https with an SSL certificate. At that point, Google’s Chrome browser will give a “not secure” warning when someone visits a page with any type of form. This includes a WordPress blog with comments or an email sign-up form.
This causes an issue for landing page services such as Instapage and LeadPages, which allow users to quickly create landing pages with lead capture forms across multiple domains. These types of pages will show the warning in Chrome, and that warning will reduce conversion rates.
Instapage has responded by offering SSL on all of its new plans, but these plans are significantly more expensive than the old plans. Right now I pay $39 per month. The cheapest new plan is $76 when paid monthly.
As for LeadPages, there’s nothing on its home page about SSL. A customer inquiry about SSL has a number of frantic comments from customers concerned about what will happen next month.
These companies can use free SSL certificate options, but there’s a bit of technical work in the background to make this work.
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Make sure your contact info is updated when you sell a domain
If you don’t, you could be on the receiving end of a UDRP.
Mike Mann just lost a UDRP. That’s what the record will show, anyway.
But he actually sold the domain in the UDRP, WashingtonJournal.com, for $75,000 earlier this year. The new owner didn’t update the Whois record. C-SPAN filed a complaint against the domain name. The new owner told the National Arbitration Forum that he was the correct owner of the domain, but the Forum decision also lists Mann.
The decision states that “when using GoDaddy’s account change process (discussed above), Mann could have chosen to have his contact information changed during the transfer to Rivero”.
I’m not sure if the panel came up with this on its own, but it doesn’t apply to this particular case. Mann transferred the domain from Enom to GoDaddy as part of the apparent sale. Only internal transfers at GoDaddy include this option.
Also, it appears the buyer added GoDaddy’s Whois proxy service after buying the domain, so Mann probably didn’t know the information wasn’t updated.
But the panel’s mention of GoDaddy’s transfer option is also a good reminder. If you have a domain at GoDaddy and sell it, be sure to check the box that says you want the Whois record to be updated to reflect the new owner.
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What domains BMW and other end users bought last week
BMW, a gaming company, and a deals site bought domain names over the past week.
It was a frustrating week to uncover end user domain name sales at Sedo because many of the buyers are using Whois privacy. Still, I was able to figure out the (likely) buyer of WomenInc.com at $25,000 after sleuthing around.
Also note the €11,000 sale of Iliad.it and BitCasinos.com, which will be used to direct people to casinos that accept bitcoin.
Here’s the list I uncovered:
(You can view previous lists like this here.)
WomenInc.com $25,000- The domain has Whois privacy but the buyer is likely this group. You’ll note that they also have a trademark filing for The Music Channel and are using that template for the new site.
Iliad.it €11,000 – Iliad Holding S.p.A. Looks like a relatively new company. The site on the domain as of 9/19 is from the previous owner.
ActionGame.com €6,500 – Online gaming network and publisher Zygomatic.
Scortex.com $5,000 – Scoretex is a “smart visual imaging” company. They were smart to upgrade from the matching .io domain.
BitCasinos.com $4,600 – The buyer is using Whois privacy but is creating a site about casinos that accept bitcoin.
Alpharent.com $3,500 – BMW. BMW owns a company called Alphabet as well as Alphabet.com, which is why Google couldn’t get that domain when they named their new parent company.
Waug.com $3,495 – Waug Travel in South Korea uses the domain name Waug.co.kr.
Pepper.es €3,300 – Pepper.com is an online deals site with over a half billion pageviews per month.
LiveLife.net $2,868 – CSC bought this domain for one of its clients.
PrivateDetective.net $2,299 – Private investigation company International Counterintelligence Services (ICS).
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Man sentenced for hijacking company’s domain name and demanding $10,000
Man held former company’s name for ransom and redirected it to porn site.
An Arizona man has been sentenced for redirecting his former company’s domain name to a porn site.
Travis Tso worked for an IT company in Phoenix. In 2011 he renewed an account for the company with GoDaddy.
Fast forward to 2015, when the company decided to update its contact information with GoDaddy. The company reached out to Tso and asked for the account login info. According to the statement Tso made in a plea deal, Tso lied and told them he didn’t have it.
He then changed the contact info on the account several times and made changes to the account so the website was redirected and email didn’t work. He asked the company for $10,000 if they wanted the domain back. When they refused, he redirected the domain to a porn site.
Tso was sentenced Monday to four years of probation and will pay $9,000 restitution.
While someone at a company has to have registrar login credentials, it’s important to have security protocols in place to make sure this type of hijacking doesn’t happen. Also, the domain shouldn’t be registered in the name of an employee.
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Spanish police raid .Cat domain name registry offices
Raid is part of crackdown on Catalonia independence referendum.
As reported on DomainIncite and InternetNews.me overnight U.S. time, Spanish police have raided the offices of Fundació puntCAT, the registry operator for the .cat domain name.
.Cat is a domain name for the Catalonia region and people that speak Catalan.
Spanish authorities asked the registry to block domain names that were being used to spread information about an upcoming referendum for independence. puntCAT sent this letter to ICANN earlier this week to advise it about what was happening:
We have denounced to @ICANN the disproportionate action of the courts. Committed to freedom on the Internet. pic.twitter.com/NkvTMYJ79d
— Fundació puntCAT (@puntcat) September 17, 2017
Spanish authorities have raided the office and apparently taken some computers. According to InternetNews.me, they also arrested the group’s CTO. It’s unclear what arrested means in these circumstances.
There are over 100,000 .cat domain names registered. The ongoing operations should not be affected because puntCAT uses a third-party registry services provider, and because of the distributed nature of DNS. However, if certain domains are deleted or blocked, this could propagate across DNS.
It’s worth noting that .cat is not a country code domain name. It is a sponsored top level domain name.
Here are some pictures from the raid:
Right now spanish police @guardiacivil is doing an intervention in our office @ICANN pic.twitter.com/nh0b1lnrv7
— Fundació puntCAT (@puntcat) September 20, 2017
@diariARA @elmonarac1 la Guardia Civil a la porta de la @puntcat tres cotxes i molts efectius. pic.twitter.com/HSVOqK43QQ
— Guillem Fernandez (@guillemfg) September 20, 2017
Follow @puncat for updates.
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Median sales price at Uniregistry stays steady as sales grow
Median price has dropped slightly so far this year.
Uniregistry issued a release this morning with sales data from the first eight months of 2017.
The total number of sales increased 24% to 3,617. The total value was $29 million (up from $25 million), or an average of $8,017 per domain.
The release noted that the average sales price was down from $9,110 last year.
But averages are misleading. I generally ignore them when marketplaces release them. They can be drastically affected by one or two big sales and don’t paint an accurate picture of what’s going on.
The median–the point at which half the sales are above and half are below–is a better measure for a marketplace. I reached out to Uniregistry to get this number.
The median price this year has been $4,000. Last year it was $4,200, so there was little movement on that front.
This median number is a good one for domain sellers to think about.
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Lack of disclosure leads to Reverse Domain Name Hijacking finding
Mexican resort operator failed to disclose business relationship with domain owner.
Trouble in Paradise.
The operators of two Mexican resorts–Golden Parnassus Paradise of the Gods and Great Parnassus Paradise of the Gods–have been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH) in a recent cybersquatting complaint.The resorts filed UDRPs against the domains GoldenParnassusCancun.com and GreatParnassusCancun.com. The domains are owned by a company in Florida that wholesales vacation packages to travel agencies.
The UDRP filings missed several critical details and failed to disclose a 10+ year relationship between the complainants and the domain owner. It turns out that the Florida company has a long-running business deal to wholesale vacation packages to the resorts. It has even received the resort owner’s approval for changes to websites on the domains at issue.
Although the domain owner didn’t ask for a finding of RDNH, the panel considered it anyway and determined that the filing was made in bad faith:
After reviewing all the evidence, the Panel has come to the conclusion that the Complainant has failed to disclose a number of material facts, including the existence of the long standing business relationship between the parties and the specific facts recited in this decision at paragraph 6.B, which were critical to the Panel’s finding that Respondent holds legitimate rights and interests in the disputed domain names, and which were obviously known to the Complainants before they began these proceedings. In these circumstances, the filing of the Complaint represents an abuse of process which the Panel finds entirely unacceptable. Accordingly, the Panel finds that the Complainants have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking.
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My thoughts on employee turnover at Uniregistry
Here are some probable reasons you’re seeing visible turnover at Uniregistry.
On Friday, Konstantinos Zournas at OnlineDomain wrote about something people have been mumbling about on message boards for a couple months now: turnover at Frank Schilling’s company Uniregistry.
Konstantinos is correct. There has been quite a bit of visible turnover at the company. A lot happened over the summer, but there has certainly been turnover for a while. I have explained DNW to a couple marketing people at Uniregistry, only to have them leave a week or two later. (I hope that’s not correlated!)
I think there are many reasons for this.
First, I should state that I know for a fact that not everyone leaving Uniregistry has been let go. Some have left on their own volition. Others have been fired.
I also know that headcount at the company is at or near its peak. So the company isn’t laying off people as a cut-your-way-to-profitability plan.
That said, here are some reasons I think Uniregistry has had visible turnover lately:
1. Grand Cayman. Not everyone who works at the company lives in Cayman. But for those that relocate there, I imagine it takes a special circumstance to really embrace it. It’s a small place and certainly not for everyone. I could never talk my family into moving there. If I did, I think they’d constantly nag me to return to the States. Some people love it, but it would be hard for others.
2. Frank is a demanding guy. Frank Schilling didn’t get rich just by being lucky. Read any profile of the man and you’ll know he worked like crazy to snap up domains in the early 2000s. He’s going to expect his employees to work extremely hard, too. His extreme expectations might not mix with the balance some employees seek.
3. It’s a sales organization. While there are a lot of tech employees at Uniregistry, a large number of employees are salespeople. Sales departments have lots of turnover. It’s a numbers game. (I imagine sales head Jeffrey Gabriel is also a demanding, numbers-driven boss. Otherwise, he’d no longer be with the company.)
4. New TLDs. New top level domains aren’t doing well. Uniregistry’s TLDs aren’t hitting the numbers the company hoped for and that’s not going to change anytime soon. I’m not sure if some layoffs were directly related to new TLD sales, but when sales are going gangbusters at a company they often don’t bother to cut the dead weight. A revenue miss will lead any company owner to take a hard look at his or her team and make some difficult decisions.
That’s my four cents.
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Analysis: next generation companies in China still prefer .com
Kassey Lee reviews top level domain usage by top new internet companies in China.
Several years ago some domain experts predicted that the next generation companies would prefer new extensions because of better names at lower prices than .com. Is this trend happening now? I want to know, so do people investing in the Chinese domain market.
Long established magazine CI Week has recently published the “2017 Top 300 New Internet Companies” (2017新互联网公司TOP300) list, which provides an excellent source to study this trend.
I have selected the top 30 companies from the list for a detailed analysis. For each of the companies, I used Baidu search to find the domain name for its corporate site. The result is shown in the table below.
RankNameNameDomain 1京东金融Jing Dong Jin RongJR.JD.com 2众安保险Zhongg An Bao XianZhongan.com 3易鑫金融Yi Xin Jin RongDaikuan.com 4摩拜单车Mo Bai Dan Che (Mobike)Mobike.com 5泰康在线Tai Kang Zai XianTK.cn 6微众银行Wei Zhong Yin HangWebank.com 7蜻蜓FMQing Ting FMQingting.fm 851信用卡51 Xin Yong KaU51.com 9熊猫TVXiong Mao TVPanda.tv 10乐视体育Le Shi Ti YuLesports.com 11瓜子二手车直卖网Gua Zi Er Shou Che Zhi Mai WangGuazi.com 12美菜网Mei Cai WangMeicai.cn 13趣分期Qu Fen QiQufenqi.com 14小赢理财Xiao Ying Li CaiXiaoying.com 15中商惠民网Zhong Shang Hui Min WangHuimin.cn 16龙珠TVLong ZhuLongzhu.com 17ofo共享单车OFO Gong Xiang Dan CheOFO.so (OFO.com) 18摩比神奇360 SecurityMo Bi Shen Qi 360360securityapps.com 19碳云智能科技Tan Yun Zhi Neng Ke JiiCarbonx.com 20好屋中国Hao Wu Zhong GuoHaowu.com 21掌众金融Zhang Zhong Jin RongWeshare.com.cn 22波奇网Bo Qi WangBoqii.com 23理财网Li Cai WangXGQQ.com 24贝贝网Bei Bei WangBeibei.com 25TalkingData(腾云天下)TalkingDataTalkingdata.com 26车和家Che He JiaChehejia.com 27云鸟配送Yun Niao Pei SongYunniao.cn 28e袋洗e Dai XieDaixi.com 29斗鱼TVDou Yu TVDouyu.com 30人人车Ren Ren CheRenrenche.comThe result is very clear: 77% of the next generation companies prefer .com and only 17% use .cn. The only two non-mainstream extensions spotted are .tv and .fm. Therefore, .com is still king! If you want the largest pool of corporate buyers, stick with .com.
Why no change at all? Consumers are busy, and remembering less is better. However, new extensions require consumers to remember not just the name but also the extension of a domain name. This is a big ask. Amazon knows this issue well. They popularized one-click online shopping, after all.
Digging deeper, we see that 70% of the domain names match their brands. This means most startups in China understand the power of a brand-matching domain name: if you remember a brand, you know what products it represents and where to buy them online.
You may notice Pinyin names are popular: 60% of the domain names are Pinyin. However, I caution startups to study their desired Pinyin name to make sure it can be used globally. Is it easy to pronounce? Some good Pinyin names in the list are Beibei.com and Douyu.com. On the other hand, names such as Zhongan.com and Qufenqi.com may be challenging outside China. There is a workaround, however, by upgrading to a short acronym such as ZG.com and QFQ.com in this example.
In short, .com will remain the golden standard in corporate China.
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Will Chatbots change the web? – DNW Podcast #153
How you can leverage chatbots in your business.
Everyone is talking about Chatbots. This week I talk to chatbot expert Peter Lisoskie of Chatbot Nation about how businesses can use chatbots and how they might change our interaction with the web. There’s an interesting use case for domain registrars, too. Listening to this episode might give you some great business ideas. Also: Trending names, a $275k value, Hurrican Irma, Topcoin, strong new TLD sales and more.
Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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Google reminds everyone how .mobi domains are stupid
.Mobi domains used to have a point. Now they don’t.
Last week Google posted a quick guide to moving from a subdomain for a mobile site to just using the same domain and a responsive site. The post doesn’t mention .mobi, but the same concept applies: In 2017, there’s no reason to have a separate website for mobile browsers.
.Mobi made a lot of sense when it was launched in 2006. It seemed quite prescient the following year when Apple launched the original iPhone.
But maintaining separate websites for mobile and larger browsers doesn’t make much sense anymore. Now, everyone should create a responsive website that adjusts based on the size of the browser.
Maintaining two different sites is bad for SEO and costs more money.
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Domain name humor in Catastrophe
Having fun with fake top level domain names.
In this scene in Catastrophe, Sharon and Rob make up fake top level domain names.
If you want a good laugh, you should definitely check out the Amazon Original Series Catastrophe. There’s even some domain name humor in the season finale of season two.Sharon and Rob are fighting, and Rob points out that they need to make arrangements for the kids:
Sharon: You can e-mail me.
Rob: OK. Is your e-mail address still Impatient[explicit]@Mean.jerk?
Sharon: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Is yours still FatIdiot@BadBreath.[explicit]?
Rob then walks to the car, where his drug-and-alcohol addicted friend Fergal is waiting for him. Fergal turns to Rob.
Fergal: Dot [explicit]. That’s awesome. Is that an actual domain name? Because if it is, I will buy that.
My guess is the part I’ve blanked out here (a derogatory term commonly used in Britain) would not pass ICANN’s rules for a top level domain. But you never know what will happen in round 2!
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Categories: Domains
My first domain name sale through DomainAgents
Here’s how my first sale went down.
At NamesCon this year I met up with Ryan McKegney of domain sales service DomainAgents. After talking with him, I finally decided to take the ten minutes necessary to add my domain portfolio to DomainAgents.
This month I made my first sale with DomainAgents, but it actually wasn’t one of the domains I listed for sale. It was just a lead that came in through one of DomainAgents partners.
DomainAgents has deals with domain registrars, Whois sites and name spinners/suggestion tools. It syndicates some domain listings to them and also lets people make an offer on any domain name. In my case, the partner that generated the lead was a name spinning site.
Here’s the kicker: Potential buyers have to pay a $19.95 fee to submit an offer. They get their money back if they don’t receive a response from the owner.
DomainAgents pays domain owners $10 for responding to an offer. So even if the buyer doesn’t make a good offer, at least you’re getting a little bit of money for your time.
The other interesting thing is that the buyer pays all of the fees for the transaction, including DomainAgents’ fee. As a seller, you just see their offer and your counteroffers. The buyer, on the other hand, sees the itemized fees when they interact with the negotiation system.
Once a deal is struck, it’s sent to Escrow.com as a brokerage transaction.
I ended up selling my domain for about what I would have received after the commission had it been sold at my “buy now” price listed on Afternic.
Even though the domain I sold wasn’t listed on DomainAgents, I think it’s worth taking ten minutes to add your portfolio there. You never know…
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Foster agency files UDRP against domain “held for ransom”
Agency decided to file cybersquatting complaint rather than pay £9,000.
Earlier this month I wrote about a UK foster agency that forgot to renew its domain name and then complained that it was being “held for ransom” by someone who registered it upon expiration.
The person who bought LittleAcornsFostering.com allegedly asked the foster agency for £9,000 if it wanted to buy the domain from him.
That’s a pretty hefty price for this domain name, so the foster agency decided to take another approach that could result in the domain owner getting nothing. It filed a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization.
Companies that have let domain names lapse have won UDRPs in the past, and I’d guess this case is in the foster agency’s hands to lose.
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Company files UDRP against a relative, but it’s RDNH
What’s Italian for domain hijacking?
Colussi S.p.A. of Milan, Italy has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH) over the domain name Colussi.com.
The domain name is owned by Andrea Colussi, a cousin of the current Chairman and a shareholder of Colussi S.p.A., and nephew of Angelo Colussi, the founder of Colussi S.p.A.
This was a dead-on-arrival case. How could you show that someone whose last name is Colussi doesn’t have a legitimate interest in the domain name Colussi.com?
The complaint suggests that Andrea Colussi should have transferred rights in the Colussi name along with a business sale that took place in 1999. The World Intellectual Property Organization panelist reviewed the documentation around that agreement but probably didn’t need to. It seems to be outside the scope of a UDRP.
The panelist listed five reasons for finding RDNH. The first one was reason enough:
…the Complainant was clearly aware of the Respondent’s identity and of his family name, Colussi, which is identical to the disputed domain name, and thus the Complainant had a clear knowledge of the Respondent’s rights and legitimate interests in the disputed domain name.
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