Archive for the ‘eNom’ Category
That’s a whole lotta top level domains.
[Updated with comment from Demand Media and from investor call] Demand Media, parent company of eNom, announced today that it has invested $18 million into new top level domain names.
It’s not clear if this is for application fees only:
In April 2012, Demand Media invested $18 million in pursuit of its generic Top Level Domain (“gTLD”) initiative, which it believes represents a complementary strategic growth opportunity for its Registrar services.
Given that this refers only to the month of April, when Demand Media would have completed its applications, it’s possible that this is for application fees and related expenses only. That’s a whole lot of top level domains.
Kristen Moore, VP, Corporate Marketing & Communications at Demand Media, tells Domain Name Wire: “As the ICANN application process is not yet completed, we aren’t commenting on the specifics of any applications beyond the size of our investment and our enthusiasm for the opportunity at this time.”
On the investor conference call today, the company said it has committed $18 million in “support” of the program. It has signed two partners that will use its backend system. It also said it “may become a registry in our own right”, e.g. apply for domains itself. Its CFO said it “funded” $18 million in April, which still leads us back to application fees.
Interestingly, by the spirit of the rules, Demand Media shouldn’t be eligible to apply for new TLDs due to multiple UDRP losses. But there are plenty of technicalities to get around that.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- In Demand (Part 2): How the Domain Business Can Benefit from Demand Media
- Demand Media Gets Into the Other Side of UDRP
- Demand Media Renews Ad Deal With Google
Companies still fall victim to anti-cybersquatting rule for new TLD applicants.
The latest (but certainly not final) version of the new top level domain name guidebook still includes a provision that, at least by the spirit of the clause, would prevent Go Daddy and Demand Media (NYSE: DMD) from applying for new top level domain names.
Section 1.2.1 of the May 20 release (large pdf) includes a laundry list of reasons why an applicant would be barred from registering a top level domain name, including if they have been “involved in of a pattern of adverse, final decisions indicating that the applicant or individual named in the application was engaged in cybersquatting.”
The guidebook defines this as three adverse decisions (including UDRP) including one in the past four years.
Both Go Daddy and Demand Media (which owns eNom) would be barred under this provision as they have multiple UDRP losses. Demand Media is clearly concerned about this provision.
That said, I still think there are loopholes that would allow these entities to apply.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Demand Media Demands Three-Strikes Rethink
- eNom and Go Daddy Still Disqualified from Applying for New Top Level Domains
- Demand Media Will Never Get Love from the Mainstream Media
Demand Media results shed light on revenue sharing, eNom results.
Earlier this week Demand Media reported fourth quarter results. The company eked out a small profit in the quarter, but expects to return to losses going forward.
You can read the complete details here, but here are some interesting numbers:
Revenue Sharing: In Q4 its network of customer web sites (which would include parked pages) generated 3.866 million billion page views with an RPM of $3.11. But the company reported that its RPM excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC) was $2.25.
The company says “Revenue ex-TAC is defined by the Company as GAAP revenue less traffic acquisition costs (TAC). TAC comprises the portion of Content & Media GAAP revenue shared with the Company’s network customers.”
So according to this definition, of the $3.11 generated per thousand page views, only $.86 was shared with publishers. This seems very low, but I’ve contacted Demand Media for an explanation and will update accordingly.
Changes in RPM: The gross RPM on customer web sites was down 22% compared to Q4 2009. The RPM on Demand Media’s owned and operated network was up 36%. Of course, a lot of Demand’s owned and operated revenue comes from actual web sites such as eHow.
eNom Growing: Registrar revenue for 2010 was $100M, up 10% compared to 2009. Including all of Demand Media’s registrars (eNom is the biggest), it had 11 million domains under management a the end of 2010. That’s up from 9.1 million at the end of 2009.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Demand Media Files to Go Public – Demand By the Numbers
- In Demand (Part 2): How the Domain Business Can Benefit from Demand Media
- Demand Media Launches Blog Distribution Network
Company sets flotation price range.
A large domain name company is getting ready to go public. Will you get in on the action?
Demand Media, which owns eNom, has set an expected price per share of $14-$16. It plans to sell 4.5 million shares while existing shareholders hope to offload 3 million shares.
The company also released preliminary, unaudited numbers for Q4 2010. In the last quarter of the year it grossed between $71.5 million and $73.5 million, a 31% increase over the same quarter in 2009. Demand Media credits the growth primarily to increased content revenue due to both more pageviews and a higher RPM. Increased domain name registrations also helped, but to a lesser extent.
So, do you plan to buy shares in Demand Media’s IPO?
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Demand Media Files to Go Public – Demand By the Numbers
- In Demand (Part 2): How the Domain Business Can Benefit from Demand Media
- Demand Media Will Never Get Love from the Mainstream Media
Afternic “turns on” its two new partners, giving domain name owners access to a powerful sales network.
Yesterday I wrote about my success with Go Daddy Premium Listings. The only downside to the service is that your domain names have to be at Go Daddy. But there’s good news for domainers who want to get similar reach for domains that are currently at Moniker and eNom — those two registrars are now active with Afternic’s Premium listing service.
What This Means
If you have your domain names at eNom/eNomCentral/BulkRegister or Moniker, you can now get them listed for sale within the registration path at four of the top 10 domain registrars. In addition to these two new registrars your domains will be listed for sale at Network Solutions, Register.com, and Name.com directly within the registration process. Customers can immediately purchase your domain name through the shopping cart and your domain will be transferred to them without any direct involvement with you.
The domains will also be listed on other registrar and partner sites but without the registration path/instant fulfillment capabilities.
How it Works
All of your interaction for listing the domain names occurs in your Afternic account. After logging in you simply add your domain names and select the “Premium” promotion level. You will also need to add a “Buy It Now” price for the domain names.
Afternic then runs some checks including ownership and content (Afternic doesn’t sell adult, gambling, and trademark domain names), after which you “opt in” the domains.
Once opted in, you won’t be able to make changes to your whois information or push the domain name to another account without first opting the domain name out. You can still list your domains for sale on other web sites, but if you sell it elsewhere you should remove the listing from Afternic.
What to Expect
A select group of large domainers have been able to use the Premium Listing level at Afternic for the past year. They’ve told me the results were remarkable. Your success will depend on a couple factors:
-How good your domain names are. They don’t need to be “premium”; they just need to be domain names that someone might want to register for their own business.
-How you price your domains. This sales channel works great with small and medium size businesses. Keep in mind the typical Afternic sale is around $1,200. I suggest pricing your domains in the $600-$2,500 range for best results. The commission is 20% (net 15% if you park the domains with Afternic) with a $120 minimum.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Scoop: Afternic Will Change Game This Week with eNom and Moniker Partnerships
- Afternic Adds Name.com to List of Premium Registrars
- Afternic Drops Basic Listings, Offers Commission Discount for Parked Domains
By Kevin Murphy
Demand Media has asked ICANN to reconsider an anti-cybersquatting provision in the new top-level domain Applicant Guidebook that may ban the company from running a TLD.
ICANN will do background checks on the companies applying for TLDs and their officers. If they are found to have lost three UDRP decisions in the last four years, their applications will be rejected.
Demand Media, which owns eNom, calls this “draconian”, saying that three UDRP losses can hardly be considered a “pattern” of cybersquatting when a company owns thousands of domains.
As DNW reported last month, a Demand Media subsidiary has six UDRP losses to its name just this year, although the ICANN guidebook may contain enough loopholes to let the company bid anyway.
Demand said the three-strikes rule is “an extremely broad standard that we believe will unintentionally disqualify otherwise qualified applicants”.
It went on to say that such a rule was never envisioned by the UDRP, and that some respondents may have chosen to fight complaints more fiercely had they known the full consequences.
Using UDRP decisions as an additional ex post facto punishment to disqualify an otherwise qualified applicant is an inappropriate and draconian penalty. The result is a retroactive change in the legal consequences of all UDRP decisions.
Demand Media’s position is backed up by the Internet Commerce Association, which represents big-volume domain investors.
But the rules are supported by ICANN’s intellectual property stakeholders, which have been fighting for stronger IP protections in the new TLD program for years and seem to be getting their way.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- In Demand (Part 2): How the Domain Business Can Benefit from Demand Media
- Demand Media Buys Demand.com
- Demand Media to ICANN: Hurry Up
Court transfers lawsuit to Virginia.
In a move that may have been expected by some observers, John Zuccarini’s lawsuit against NameJet, Network Solutions, eNom, and VeriSign has been transferred to the Eastern District of Virginia.
The case stems from some of John Zuccarini’s domain names that were transferred to a receiver after a cybersquatting judgment against him. The receiver let some of the domain names expire and they were subsequently auctioned off on NameJet.
eNom and Network Solutions asked the court to dismiss the case based on improper jurisdiction. Zuccarini had agreed to contracts with “forum selection clauses” when he registered the domain names. The court determined that the case should not be dismissed outright as the defendants wished, but instead should be transferred to the Eastern District of Virginia (pdf).
This move was not entirely unexpected. When the case was filed, domain name attorney John Berryhill (who is not involved in the case) commented on Domain Name Wire: “Venue Fail. He is in the District of Southern Florida alleging breach of contract, when the contract specifies that disputes are to be brought in Virginia.”
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Zuccarini Sues NameJet, eNom, VeriSign, and Network Solutions
- Court Denies Emergency Injunction for Zuccarini Domains Sold at NameJet
- Zuccarini Responds in Domain Case, Says Assignee is Lying
Big issue on the table at ICANN retreat.
In about 24 hours the ICANN Board of Directors will kick off a retreat. It’s not an official board meeting, but it’s anticipated that the two day retreat will finalize an important issue: registry/registrar separation.
A lot is at stake in this decision. Millions of dollars for the stakeholders.
Until now a registry hasn’t been able to own a registrar and (technically) vice-versa. Afilias is owned by a number of registrars, though.
The question is if this separation should be relaxed.
In one corner are the registrars that would like to introduce new top level domain names. Ideally they would like to be unencumbered. But some of them, including eNom, are willing to go the middle road. The middle ground proposal is dubbed JN2. It basically says a registrar can be a registry but with heavy restrictions until 18 months after the TLD is released.
In the other corner are those that want no integration. They want to limit cross ownership to 2%. In Afilias’ case, it wants to increase cross ownership to 15% because of its existing registrar investors.
You can read about the various proposals and how no consensus has been reached here.
Another issue is private registrars. Should someone who owns a registrar solely to manage their own domains be restricted from releasing a new TLD? That would defeat the purpose of this restriction.
The pressure is on ICANN’s board. Like any good bureaucratic and political organization, odds are they’ll pick the middle of the road. Or punt to someone else.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- ICANN Board Drops Bomb on Registrars Hoping to Launch New TLDs
- After 3,000 Emails, No Consensus on Registry-Registrar Separation
- Battle Erupts Between Domain Registries and Registrars
HostExploit report generates more questions than answers.
I just finished reading HostExploit’s report about Demand Media and its domain name registration business (eNom). Whenever I read a report like this, I try to think about the motives of the report’s authors. In this case, it’s clear that HostExploit wanted to rush something out to piggyback on the buzz of Demand Media’s S-1 filing to go public. When I see punctuation errors in a research report, I pay closer attention.
The report basically says eNom is a bad registrar and web host, hosting a number sites with badware, malware, and illegal pharmacies. That may be true (more on that later in this post). But the report then lists some other allegations, such as saying “We received reports suggesting Demand Media / eNom utilize these techniques”, referring to cybersquatting, click fraud, splogs, and link farms. But then the report basically says it hasn’t even analyzed whether or not this is true.
And since when are link farms illegal? Show me a registrar who will shut down someone for hosting link farm sites. I don’t condone such things, but it’s not a registrar’s business to regulate. In fact, they’d probably get sued for shutting down a link farm. It’s the search engines’ business to effectively filter out link farms.
Then section 8 of the report says that eNom might be in non-compliance with its Registrar Accreditation Agreement. It then reprints and explains sections of the agreement, but fails to say why it believes eNom is out of compliance. I assume this section has to do with information in KnujOn’s report earlier this year.
Now, back to the issue at hand. Let’s assume eNom does have a lot of bad actors that use its services. What can eNom do? It’s a tough question. On the one hand, a registrar doesn’t want this stuff on its network. On the other hand, it doesn’t want any ‘false positives’ where it shuts down a legitimate web site.
The challenge is striking a fine balance. It appears eNom is getting a reputation as being a registrar of choice for bad actors, and that means more bad actors will use its services in the future. (Ironically, HostExploit’s report basically tells criminals which registrar to use.) eNom needs to quash that reputation. The last thing it wants is underground criminal forums to start promoting “hey, use eNom!” Perhaps it should work with law enforcement to (legally) shut down some of these bad sites, and then publicize its work.
And one more thing. I really hope HostExploit got permission before republishing a copyrighted article about its report from ComputerWorld.com.* That would be ironic, wouldn’t it?
*I haven’t “analyzed whether or not this is true”.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- In Demand (Part 2): How the Domain Business Can Benefit from Demand Media
- Demand Media Buys Demand.com
- Demand Media Lands in Austin
Looking up potential domains at eNom? The company uses that data in many ways.
[UPDATED] Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt has referred to the data from eNom and its value to the company before, but its newly filed S-1 explains the value succinctly. It uses the data not only for its content business, but also to determine which domain names to acquire for its own portfolio:
Proprietary Data. In providing registration services for over 10 million domain names, our Registrar resolves an average of over 2 billion domain name system queries per day. Our Registrar also serviced, on average, more than 3 million domain name look-ups per day from potential customers seeking to register new websites or purchase existing domains during the first six months of 2010. These queries and look-ups provide insight into what consumers may be seeking online and represent a proprietary and valuable source of relevant information for our platform’s title generation algorithms and the algorithms we use to acquire undeveloped websites for our portfolio.
[Update: this doesn't imply at all that the company engages in "front-running", or registering a domain you lookup prior to you being able to register it. A Demand Media spokesperson confirmed to me that "Demand Media's eNom subsidiary does not engage in the practice of “front-running” domains".]
The S-1 also confirms something we already know: eNom keeps a number of its customers’ expired domains for itself:
Domain names not renewed by their prior registrants that meet certain of our criteria are acquired by us to augment our portfolio of undeveloped owned and operated websites. Our access to this stream of expiring names and visibility into the organic performance of those sites is a unique source of data and creates the potential for future growth for our Content & Media service offering.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Demand Media Files to Go Public – Demand By the Numbers
- eNom completes BulkRegistrar acquisition
- A Demand Media IPO Could Disclose Guts of eNom Operation
You can go forward to the next page