July 2009

July 2009– Issue #48

Welcome to Summer (in the Northern hemisphere). Domain monetization companies may be entering a quieter time in the months ahead, but they did have stuff happening in June. NameMedia announced new iPhone apps that let you check your stats on your iPhone. Parked and WhyPark revealed more details of their combined company. In coming months I will be reviewingmore of themini-site services that help you “develop” domains beyond parking. Domain Roundtable was also held in June.Attendance was significantly smaller than attendance at DomainFEST Global in January, but there was good content and excellent panels. Below are links to three video interviews that I conducted with domain monetization industryleaders at Domain Roundtable. The production values are not wonderful, but the content is worth watching. You can also subscribe to these and more videos through iTunes as a podcast. Just search for the podcast titled Domain Parking in the iTunes store.Not all will play on an iPhone, but most are optimized for an iPod.

No Summer Slowdown at Sedo?

Ready for the summer slow-down? Domain income has seasonal components. We usually see a significant dip in income during the summer. Simonetta Batteiger revealed that Sedo has not seen a dip yet this year. Simonetta is theDirector of Finance and Sales for North America for Sedo. She’s also the head of parking, but they took that out of the title when she succeeded Eben Smith. (Eben continues to work for Sedo.) You’ll see in this interview that Simonetta is more than just a pretty face. She talks in depth about Sedo’s strategy of simple landing pages and answers questions about why some accounts get canceled. I found her to be both charming and intelligent, and she seems to be off to a great start. While she is new to American domainers, she has been with Sedo since 2006 in several roles.

To be fair, summer had barely started when I had a chance to talk with Simonetta at Domain Roundtable last month. I imagine that Sedo will see their slowdown soon. In this interview she handles some tough questions about Sedo canceling someone’s account. I get the impression that Google is putting a lot of pressure on parking companies like Sedo to get rid of non-converting traffic. Of course nobody at Sedo can officially admit that Sedo iseven monetized by Google.

Watch the Video interview with Simonetta Batteiger here. (The poor camera angle is my fault.)

NameMedia unveils iPhone App, Opens Storefronts for everyone.

Brian Carr of NameMedia had a quiet year last year. They were literally in a quiet period during their planned initial public offering. Now that the IPO has been canceled, he seemed eager to talk about what ActiveAudience, GoldKey, and SmartName have been up to lately.As I mentioned, they have new iPhone apps in the app store that allow you to check your stats. This is a first for a domain monetization company, and I hope others follow their lead. The app is a little bare-bones, and thus far it only allows you to check parking stats. There are plans for future editionsto allow you to actually edit your parking options on the iPhone. My interview with BrianCarr is 18 minutes long. I had a bad ear ache during the interview, so I didn’t do a great job, but he held up his end of the interview quite well. It is clear that NameMedia is here to stay. In the interview Brian reveals that customers of GoldKey and ActiveAudience can ask their account manager to have the “SmartName Shops” feature turned on in their domains.More info on this feature is in the video.

Watch the video interview with Brian Carr here

Parked and WhyPark to remain separate.

WhyPark immediately benefited when they were bought by Parked earlier this year. They got to use Parked’s Yahoo monetization feed which improved monetization for their customers. That’s aboutthe only thing new you will see in the near future stemming from the merger of these two companies. I interviewed Donny Simonton of Parked and Craig Rowe of WhyPark at Domain Roundtable to see what they have planned. It was a short interview because they aren’t planning many changes yet. It’s still interesting to hear the two of them talk about the purchase and their take on domain monetization..

Watch the video interview with Donny Simonton and Craig Rowe here