NamesCon – A Last Hurrah for dotcom Domain Investors?
There’s a new domain conference around the corner and it will only cost you $199 until December 1 (then $399 before January 7th). The NamesCon conference will be held January 13-15 at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. The conference overlaps with Affiliate Summit West and InterNext, so there may be more than one reason for you to be in Vegas. Richard Lau is sponsoring the conference, and the not-so hidden agenda seems to be attracting domain investors to the new .whatever TLDs that are currently launching. What will this mean to your .com domain portfolio? That’s sure to be on the agenda.
Frank Schilling and Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker are being promoted as keymote speakers. Frank is highly respected by domainers, and is investing heavily in the new TLDs. His debate with Rick Schwartz at a recent TRAFFIC conference is informative and entertaining. He is clearly betting a lot of money on .whatever TLDs, and his .tattoo TLD is having a sunrise in 2 weeks and is actually live and resolving. Shoemoney had an incredibly popular podcast for several years and is one of the kings of affiliate marketing.
How will this affect your domain portfolio? Obviously Frank and Rick have different opinions about this. In the short run I doubt that it will affect things too much – but I have let go of most of my .net and .info domains. 20 years from now we will likely see a completely different domain landscape.
If TRAFFIC is a little too expensive for your budget in these times of lean parking incomes, you may want to consider a winter trip to Vegas. I can’t pass up a good deal. I’ll be at NamesCon to see what all the fuss is about. Who knows, maybe this will be my last domain conference. There should be good drinks all around, but I don’t expect to be drinking the new TLD Kool Aid.
GoDaddy announced this week that it bought domain parking company SmartName and domain marketplace Afternic from NameMedia. GoDaddy will apparently get business name generator NameFind as well.
This leaves NameMedia with its BuyDomains unit. It will be interesting to watch what happens as GoDaddy absorbs these businesses. Will they charge for domain parking with SmartName? Their own parking product charges a fee. GoDaddy’s reputation is for up-selling and charging at least small fees for most of their services. Some domain owners dislike all of the up-sells when you go to check-out at GoDaddy; and their Super Bowl ads get mixed reviews. The company continues to thrive, however, and these new additions will help it maintain it’s huge market share.
Afternic is based in Massachusetts and provides a marketplace for domain owners to buy and sell domains. The company lists over 5 million domain names and claims that users make more than 75 million domain searches on the site each month.
GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving stated in an interview with Domain Name Wire: “We’re making [it] really, really simple for anyone who wants to find a great domain associated with their venture, regardless of whether it’s in the aftermarket or something that’s never been claimed before.”
Once integrated, Afternic will allow GoDaddy customers to buy millions of already registered domain. GoDaddy’s latest acquisitions are part of its strategy to improve its small business offerings, according to Elizabeth Driscoll, vice president of public relations at GoDaddy, in a PC World interview. GoDaddys claims 12 million customers, most of which are small businesses. Terms of the SmartName and Afternic acquisition were not disclosed.
NameMonetizer 