Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

You can tell a lot about a company by its domain name.

Anyone who has applied for business insurance knows what a colossal pain it is. You have to provide information that should be easily obtainable by the insurance broker.

Now one Canadian insurance underwriter promises to write cyber security insurance based on one piece of information: a company’s domain name.

CFC Underwriting says it can learn a lot about a company by only knowing the company’s domain name. In an interview with Canadian Underwriter, CFC’s chief innovation officer Graeme Newman said it can determine:

• Address
• Estimate of number of employees
• Revenue estimate
• Email systems used and what security is applied to it
• Websites, hosts and the security applied to those sites
• How many employee credentials are exposed on the dark web

You can definitely get a lot of this information–or at least start to ascertain it–by knowing a company’s domain name. CFC Underwriting is taking an intelligent approach to onboarding new insureds.

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Domains-on-blockchain company gets major funding boost.

Unstoppable Domains, a company that is launching domain names on blockchain technology, has raised $4 million in a Series A financing.

Draper Associates led the round. Previous investor Boost VC also participated in the round.

The company has raised $4.7 million to date.

Unstoppable Domains founder Matthew Gould explained the concept in DNW Podcast #224 in February.

The domain names can be used for both payments and websites, although domains that aren’t in ICANN’s root will not resolve for most people.

One benefit the company touts is that a domain name can’t be taken down by the players that typically participating in the domain name system. Hence, the name Unstoppable Domains.

The company is trying to introduce both new extensions and to bring blockchain features to existing extensions.

Unstoppable Domains also wants to apply for .crypto whenever ICANN gets around to opening applications for more top level domains.

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Here are three interviews with domain investors that will teach you a lot.

I interview many types of people on the DNW Podcast: domain investors, end users, service providers, domain developers, etc. Here are three podcasts that will help domain name investors that are trying to learn from others:

Logan Flatt – Logan has a background in finance and takes a very analytical approach to domain investing. He runs strict financials against the portfolio and treats it like an investment class. On the podcast, Logan explains how he manages and monitors his portfolio, and how he runs tests to figure out the best way to sell his domains. Listen.

Joshua Schoen – Joshua invests in high-value domain names. He’s fairly new to domain name investing but has acquired some spectacular domains. He explains his approach to buying domain names that aren’t actively for sale. Listen.

Mark Levine – Mark invests in lower-priced domains and sells them at reasonable prices. It’s a volume play that many domain investors try to emulate. He’s not making retirement money but is building a solid annual income. Listen.

If you want to hear some domain development stories, listen to an update with Drew Wash, who tried to build three exact match domains into businesses generating $25k/month in recurring revenue within a year.

On Tuesday I’ll release an update with Peter Askew. He talks about his recent article about selling onions that went viral and how much traffic and sales it sent to his sites. He also talks about the “failure” of his call tracking business that he discussed on episode #163. It failed but he turned it into a six-figure domain sale.

Thanks for listening.

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Procter & Gamble, a pharmaceutical company and a Chinese tour company all bought domains last week.

The household products behemoth Procter & Gamble bought a new exact match domain for its extensive portfolio at Sedo last week. Other buyers include a pharma company that paid $25,000 for RAPT.com.

Here’s the list of Sedo end user sales from the past week. You can view previous lists like this here.

Rapt.com $25,000 – FLX Bio is a pharmaceutical company that develops orally-administered drugs for cancer and other inflammatory diseases. It is forwarding the domain to its main website and I can’t find anything on it about RAPT. Microsoft appears to be the seller.

SilkRoadTravel.com $11,500 – A tour operator in West China.

Vigantol.com $9,900 – Procter & Gamble. Vigantol is a form of Vitamin D3. This was a SedoMLS sale.

A-Rent.com $5,500 – Under development for a Chicago-based company specializing in renting electrical testing equipment.

TheContext.com $3,600 – Not yet developed but this was purchased by Contextual Reports, LLC, a firm in Palo Alto.

MoneyIs.com $3,366 – New website for Real Estate mogul Andrew Cordle where he shares wealth advice via video content.

BestSecret.ro €3,000 – Forwards to BestSecret.com, a “Member’s only” online high-end clothing shopping club.

Mashup.in $2,800 – Not yet developed but this domain was purchased by Half Ticket, an Indian online clothes retailer.

ShopMate.de €2,400 – SPARWELT GmbH has a product called ShopMate. When someone purchases from a partner e-commerce company, they get a promotion for another partner company.

Ehpad-Invest.net €2,000 – Forwards to Ehpad-Invest.com, a French investment service provider.

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The timing of these two domain registrations suggests momentum with driverless taxis.

Me next to a Google/Wayme Driverless test car in Austin.

Google just registered a couple of driverless car domain names in the .app extension, showing progress on its driverless car activities and the future of driverless taxis.

The company registered Driverless.app and DriverlessCar.app this week. Neither domain resolves to a website at the time of this story.

While Google owns the .app top level domain, names in .app are open for registration by anyone.

The company’s Waymo unit launched the Waymo One app last year for users of its driverless taxi fleet in Phoenix. I find it interesting that it just registered the driverless .app domains now. Does it signal a wider rollout or progress on its driverless car program?

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Study shows that people remember domain names as having .com on the end.

One of the problems with using a top level domain name other than .com is memorability. While it might stand out to people as new or unique, many people will remember your domain name as a .com.

This is especially the case when people can’t see it, such as hearing a radio commercial for a website. But it’s even a factor when people do see the domain name, and that’s clear in a clever study performed by Kyle Byers of GrowthBadger.

Kyle surveyed 1,500 people and didn’t tell them the study was about domain names. He asked them how trustworthy a site was and the only information he gave them was a domain name. It ended in .com or one of seven other domain name extensions.

Overall, the ones that ended in .com had the highest trustworthiness score.

But the most intriguing thing to me was quantifying recall. After asking about the website, Kyle threw in a bunch of other questions to create some time between reviewing the domain and a final question: what was the domain name they saw on the first screen?

People were more likely to remember the domain if it was a .com. And if they misremembered the domain extension? They almost always misremembered it as .com:

If they misremember the TLD, most remember it as .com. Graphic courtesy GrowthBadger.

This doesn’t surprise me but quantifies the effect.

Kyle has an interesting takeaway that domain investors will like:

The domain he tested was MattressRankings.TLD. The .com is on the aftermarket for about $4,000; the others can be hand registered. Kyle asks, isn’t it worth paying extra for the aftermarket domain in light of the findings?

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These features make email management easier.

Gmail is the hub for managing my business and the browser tab I spend the most time in. But Gmail is only as powerful as you make it. Here are 5 features I use that make Gmail more effective.

Snooze

A cluttered inbox is an unusable inbox. Snooze makes it easy to prioritize emails. If I don’t have the information required to respond to an email or know that I won’t be able to address it until a certain date, I snooze the email until then. This takes it out of the inbox until the snooze date/time.

Scheduled Send

There are a handful of emails I need to send every week or once a month. It’s easier to batch these and send them at later dates. Gmail’s scheduling feature makes this possible.

A couple of ways I use this feature are:

• Create invoices in a batch and then schedule them to email on the dates they are supposed to be sent.
• I have to send a script to my wife once a week for part of her podcast. I usually forget until she’s already recording and asks me for it. With scheduling I can set the email up to send on Monday morning of the week it needs to be sent.

To use scheduling, click the up arrow next to Send in any email to see your options.

Canned Responses

While these are called Canned Responses, think of them as canned emails. They can be used as templates for emails you send frequently. Here’s a tutorial.

Smart Compose

Smart Compose is a controversial feature. I didn’t like it at first but adjusted to it within a few days. Basically, as you type is suggests the end of your sentence. If you like the suggestion you just hit the space bar to autocomplete it. Here’s an example:

Again, it takes a while to get used to this. But it definitely speeds up your email response time.

Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication will help keep your account safe. You can use an app-based authenticator, but a physical security key is faster and more secure. See how to set this up here.

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Addicting.com owner challenges in rem action.

Addicting Games screenshot

The owner of the domain name Addicting.com showed up to defend its domain name in a lawsuit.

Addicting Games, Inc., led by Bill Karamouzis (podcast), filed an in rem lawsuit against the domain name in January claiming cybersquatting.

Federal Investment Group, LLC (FIG), led by Krikor Bedrossian, has now filed with the court (pdf) to dismiss the case or move the jurisdiction.

FIG is  Nevada corporation.

According to the motion, Bill Karamouzis met with Krikor Bedrossian at a TRAFFIC conference in 2011, and the two discussed the domain name. Bedrossian questions why in rem is proper given that Karamouzi allegedly knew who owned the domain name.

The motion also states that the domain has had common ownership since 1999. This predates Addicting Games’ trademark, which would mean the domain was not registered in bad faith to target the mark.

An affidavit (pdf) from lawyer Paul Keating is included in the filing. The affidavit includes supporting documentation about the ownership of the domain.

 

 

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Most still use .com.

Last year I reviewed the domain names that MassChallenge’s incoming Texas class of startups used for their businesses. MassChallenge just announced its new Texas class, so let’s take a fresh look.

84% of the companies that had a domain name when they were announced last year used .com. This year it’s 75%.

Here are the domains used by this year’s class:

.com 39
.co 5
.net 2
.io 1
.xyz 1
.org 1
.careers 1
.ai 1
.in 1

Some of the companies are using subpar domains. For example, Axion Technologies LLC uses axiontechnologiesllc.com because another company uses the version without LLC. This is a sign that the name you’ve chosen is going to cause issues down the road.

I gave a talk about domain names to last year’s MassChallenge class and found out that the domains many of them were using were temporary. Heck, the names they had chosen were just placeholders. These are very early stage companies. So many of the companies that make it to the next stage will change their domain names.

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Panelists should find RDNH even when a complainant is just very misguided.

A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has given a free pass to a Complainant who seemed to not understand the requirements of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

Sébastien Paches filed a UDRP to get the domain name Paches.com for a business he is launching. A domain investor registered the domain before he had his business idea.

Paches tried to buy the domain but didn’t like the owner’s price, so he filed a UDRP.

This is a classic case of reverse domain name hijacking. But panelist Nick Gardner let him off the hook.

Paches was represented by counsel. His case was so dead-on-arrival that Gardner gave him a pass:

On balance the Panel does not consider the Complainant’s conduct warrants a finding of RDNH. It considers this is a case which should never have been brought and where the Complainant had no prospects whatsoever of succeeding. As such it is potentially within (i) above. There is also some evidence suggesting this is a situation whereby the Complainant has failed to buy the Disputed Domain Name at a price he was prepared to pay, and then adopted an alternative strategy of an unmeritorious Complaint. It is also the case (as the Respondent points out) that the Complainant was less than frank when seeking to buy the Disputed Domain Name claiming he wanted it for personal use as it corresponded to his family name and not mentioning his proposed business or asserting any legal claim. However the Complainant is not represented and it seems to the Panel that on balance he has simply failed to properly understand the Policy rather than acted deliberately in bad faith. Accordingly the Panel has concluded the Complainant’s conduct does not fall within the above guidelines and does not deserve the censure of a finding of RDNH.

While panelists sometimes go easy on Complainants who aren’t represented by counsel, it’s worth pointing out that the domain owner was represented by counsel. He likely paid several thousand dollars to defend the domain name. And while a finding of RDNH in a UDRP doesn’t come with a financial penalty, the domain owner is owed this respect.

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Company wanted .com domain to match its .ru website.

The owner of CarCam.ru tried to get the domain CarCam.com but was instead found to have attempted reverse domain name hijacking.

A Russian electronics seller known for its car cameras has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelist.

Limited Liability Company AV 808, which uses the domain name CarCam.ru, filed a cybersquatting dispute against the domain name CarCam.com.

The owner of CarCam.com registered the domain in 1996, well before the Russian company existed. The Russian company tried to buy the domain and filed the cybersquatting dispute under UDRP after its purchase attempts were rebuffed. In other words, it was a classic “Plan B” reverse domain name hijacking.

In finding that the case was brought in abuse of the cybersquatting policy, WIPO panelist Marilena Comanescu determined that:

the Complainant should have appreciated that establishing registration and use in bad faith in respect of a domain name which had first been registered seventeen years ago was likely to involve difficult considerations.

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Ron Jackson of DNJournal tells us what he’s seeing in the aftermarket.

Ron Jackson keeps tabs on domain name sales at DNJournal. On today’s show he discusses what he is seeing in the market, comparing .com to non-.com TLDs and country code domains. Ron answers the question on if he sees opportunity for domain investors in new TLDs.

Also: Escrow.com numbers, Wix, web browsing security, .Blog and Super Nanny

This week’s sponsor: Name.com.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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The company could drive awareness by using .Amazon.

ICANN moved a big step closer to awarding the .Amazon top level domain name to Amazon.com Friday.

The non-profit domain overseer approved a resolution that moves the top level domain forward against the wishes of Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). Two ACTO member states–Brazil and Peru–originally objected to Amazon’s 2012 application for the domain name. This kicked off a seven-year battle.

The Governmental Advisory Committee formally objected to .Amazon by unanimous consent even though the U.S. representative could have quashed the attempt.

Amazon.com challenged this decision with an Independent Review Process. It won the review in 2017 but it wasn’t over.

Since then it has tried to appease ACTO members to get the organization to drop its challenge. It offered them a $5 million gift card and lots of safeguards.

But ACTO has been stubborn. It often seemed as though it was fighting on principle rather than real concerns. This made it harder for Amazon to overcome objections that were difficult to define.

Amazon made a number of commitments to the member states as part of Public Interest Commitment. That will be open for public comment. Once the public comment period ends, .Amazon could see the light of day.

If Amazon.com uses .Amazon in a robust way it will give a shot in the arm to new top level domain name awareness. There’s a big ‘if’ there, though.

Amazon was one of the biggest applicants for new top level domains but hasn’t done much with the domains it acquired. But it has used .AWS in some advertising, and the thinking here is that it could do the same with .Amazon but at a bigger scale. It could go much bigger by putting products or categories on their own .Amazon pages. Millions of customers would then see a new top level domain.

Or maybe its seven-year battle was just a matter of securing an important piece of intellectual property.

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CentralNic bulks up in Australia by acquiring carveout of what used to be Melbourne IT.

Domain name company CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) is acquiring TPP Wholesale from ARQ Group Limited (ASX: ARQ), formerly known as Melbourne IT. The company will pay total consideration of AUD $24 million (USD $16.6 million). CentralNic will pay AUD $21.3 million up front and the transaction is expected to close by the end of next month pending financing.

ARQ Group Limited sold the other part of its domain name and hosting reseller business to Tucows in 2016 for AUD $8.1 million. That transaction included 1.6 million domains under management.

CentralNic’s acquisition includes the rest of the domain and hosting reseller business, which is primarily Australian accounts. It includes 840,000 domains under management and about 14,000 resellers. The domains include 19% of all .com.au domains.

This business delivered AUD $17.0 million in revenue to ARQ last year and, by CentralNic’s accounting, had AUD $3.9 million adjusted EBITDA for the year.

The purchase price is therefore about 6x adjusted EBITDA.

Tucows paid about 4.5x-4.7x EBITDA for its 2016 acquisition.

CentralNic already has a big presence in Australia. It acquired local registrar Instra for AUD $33 million in 2015.

CentralNic is now positioning itself as a roll-up play in the domain business.

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Automattic drops Proofreading tool from latest JetPack release.

WordPress has sunset its Proofreading tool in JetPack.

WordPress creator Automattic has ditched a great feature in the latest update to its JetPack plugin.

As of the newly released JetPack 7.3, Proofreading is no longer supported.

The proofreading tool checked posts for grammar and spelling prior to publishing them. I found it to be a good tool that often caught stuff that other grammar checkers missed. It also made good word-choice suggestions.

WordPress engineer James Huff stated that the feature was dropped because other tools get the job done:

We removed the feature as it has become a bit redundant lately. Most major web browsers have some form of this already built-in, and free extensions like [Grammarly] are making huge strides in the field.

It felt like the right time to back out of that field and focus more on everything else we offer.

I imagine it took a lot of resources to keep this featuring working. It’s good news for Grammarly; I’ll probably upgrade to its paid version.

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A candy company, an escape room and an upscale hotel chain bought domain names last week.

This week’s list of end user sales at Sedo includes an eclectic mix such as Hero.eu, RedCircle.com and ModernAnimal.com.

Here’s the list of end user sales from the past week. You can view previous lists like this here.

Hero.eu €29,000 – Hero offers interim staffing company in the Netherlands.

RedCircle.com $17,000 – RedCircle, a podcast hosting service provider that also supplies users with analytics and promotional tools, upgraded its domain. It uses GetRedCircle.com.

Veridic.com €12,000 – Forwards to Veridic.co.uk, a mobile app developer based in London that now owns the .com version of its domain.

ModernAnimal.com €11,000 – In development by a Veterinarian in Los Angeles.

MyMontage.com $10,000 – Purchased by the Montage Management Group, a luxury international hotel chain with locations in California, Mexico and some ski destinations. It uses the domain MontageHotels.com.

WeeBeastie.com $6,118 – A creative agency in Ventura, CA. It forwards to WeeBeastie.tv. This was a SedoMLS sale.

BeanBagChairs.com $5,559 – This domain used to forward to a store that sold bean bag chairs. The new buyer is developing it.

SoccerGround.com $5,000 – SoccerGround is a German company specializing in the planning, installation and assembly of small walled soccer fields.

Rowingblazers.mx $5,000 – Rowing Blazers bought another ccTLD that matches its brand. It bought two other ccTLDs a couple of weeks ago.

BV-Auctions.com $3,559 – The best guess is the buyer is the high-end car collector auction site BV Collector Car Auctions GmbH, which uses BV-Auctions.de.

Indizio.de $2,600 – Indizio is an escape room style entertainment place with two locations in Germany. The German ccTLD forwards to Indizio.one.

Vanparys.com $2,000 – A Belgium confectionery company specializing in a Dragées, an M&M-like candy with a hard outer shell. They were established in 1889 and claim to be “The Original Chocolate Dragee”.

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Wix adds fewer paying customers in Q1 compared to a year ago.

Website builder Wix (NASDAQ: WIX) added a net 180,000 paying customers in Q1 2019, the company reported in its earnings release today. That brings the total to 4.2 million.

By comparison, it added 231,000 net paying customers in Q1 2018 and 147,000 in Q4 2018.

Wix added 6.6 million new registered users in the quarter, bringing the total to 148 million. Only about 3% of its registered users are paying customers.

Revenue for the quarter was $174.3 million, up 27% year-over-year. Collections (essentially billings) were up 26% to $200.4 million.

The company expects Q2 revenue in the $182 million – $184 million range.

Read the DNW Wix review.

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Another business says it lost its domain to a web developer.

I know I’ve written about this many times, but if these stories prevent just one legal issue then it’s worth it.

Please, don’t give your web developer full access to your domain name registrar account.

Yesterday, a web site owner in Nevada filed a lawsuit (pdf) against a contract developer alleging that the developer has taken over his domain name and business.

EB Publishing, Inc. publishes ApplianceRepair.net. It hired Adrian Bursill to do work on its website. Now it alleges that he abused his access to the registrar account and switched the ownership of the website to his name.

Historical Whois records for the domain show that it changed from EB Publishing to Bursill in 2016. The domain has not switched registrars.

EB Publishing has operated the website since 1998 but says it has now lost control of it.

Your web developer should not need access to your domain registrar account. If they want access to change nameservers (which I still recommend you do yourself), make sure the access limits what they can do in the account. They should not be able to change domain contacts or transfer the domain.

Greenberg & Lieberman is representing EB Publishing.

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CentralNic wins another registry contract.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, is switching backend registry providers for its .blog top level domain name.

The company has used Nominet since the launch but will switch to CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) later this year.

Nominet is the registry for .uk domain names. CentralNic is a diversified domain name company that has won many registry contracts with its flexible pricing.

Michele Neylon, CEO of domain name registrar Blacknight, noted that many new TLD operators signed contracts before they knew how big their zones would be. Now that they have a better idea, they might get a better deal from another backend registry provider.

He also pointed out that registry provider switches are a pain for registrars. I suspect registrars are getting used to these changes as the original contracts come up for renewal.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Escrow provider reports robust domain name market in 2019.

Online escrow service Escrow.com released its Q1 market report (pdf) today, showing that domain sales were strong to start 2019.

Escrow.com handled $85 million of domain name and website transactions during Q1 2019. This was up both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year:

The United States continues to be Escrow.com’s largest source of transactions. It represents over 70% of transactions. Canada was surprisingly the second largest source of transactions during Q1 (when you split China and Hong Kong):

In addition to domain names, Escrow.com handled $15.2 million of website sales (domain plus content) in the quarter with a median price of $9,800.

Domain names without content traded at a median price of $2,500, the same as the previous five quarters.

© DomainNameWire.com 2019. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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